I currently think of Consciousness having evolved from pre-conscious stages and like all evolution it doesn’t discard its causes and stages. They remain in, underpin, influence and cause ‘modern’ consciousness. Indeed, early cave painters were modern humans (and it now seems, Neanderthal)  and their work marked the dawn of individuality that we have pursued to a kind of end and now yearn for some kind of return to the herd state from which it emerged. What has evolved in our species? Our intellect,  our technologies, or our individuation? This sculpture is about my interest in probing the layers of our consciousness, it’s relationship with the unconscious and instincts, and the data that flows between the layers. The deeper one probes, the further back one travels, the more the archetypes are common, and the thinner the membrane between our ego and the universe becomes. Also, given the current trajectory of human technologies, and continuation of the species for a sufficient length of time, we early 21st Century humans shall eventually telescope backwards into a kind of primitive.

I had the idea of staining stone with iron oxide (ochre), the pigment used in rendering the hands and prey of palaeolithic peoples on cave walls as a gesture of super-temporal communication and to represent the continuum of the human experience and our drive to individuate. The magic and mechanics. Which is the stronger drive behind the human experience?

I mixed the ochre with hydraulic lime as a fixative and added water to make a wash. I applied the paint in dabs watching the porous stone soak in. Of particular interest was what would happen at the border, the ridge between the exposed material and the honed surface. I was worried that it might absorb across, obliterating the outline. However it barely went beyond a millimetre in places in a fascinating sort of osmotic fashion. I repeated the process 5 or 6 times through the day until the ochre formed a consistent colour.

I was pleased with the result. It allowed me to imagine falling backwards and fitting through the aperture or portal (it reminds me of cartoon characters that smash through walls leaving a self shaped hole), – a visual aid to help meditate on the layers within the unconscious that lie beneath the honed surface of our daily, conscious state.

 

Ochre (iron oxide powder), lime, water on sand blasted portland limestone