limits and leavings
Limits and Leavings by Eleanor Amor and Nat Penney presents a series of sculptures that carefully approach a dialectical psychological state – a constant to and fro between opposing conditions and an attempt to balance the need to control with the desire of letting go.
In Amor’s work ‘keep a calm gaze and lose no blood’, this forms the sauntering and wobbling image of a fencing match, two opponents playfully form their strategy of attack and defence to reach a climactic summit of victory and defeat. However, in this particular mise-en-scène, the nature of combat as a slippery and suspenseful game is stripped of visceral impact, leaving behind a gentle play-by-play of what might have taken place. This commentary that echoes beyond the event of conflict forms the story of what we choose to remember, and whilst the game has been played and our opponent departs from our world, the impact of a bygone strategy remains as an elusive blueprint – should we choose to take up our swords once more.
The threat of repeating one’s past fateful decisions is often overtaken by the reverie of what could have been, a simmering daydream that moves us into fluctuating possibilities, sidestepping the most valuable player of all – chance. In her work ‘I almost fell off my chair!’, Nat Penney disregards the reverie and instead chooses to uphold chance as a conduit for rupturing change that is symbiotic to a sense of control. Poised upon delicately lathed brass toes, the work performs a balancing act between solid steel and its unlikely beech timber counterpart. The bones of two chairs intersect reposefully against one another, standing alert and indivisible. How could we ever imagine letting go? The strength of this union owes everything to control, yet stands only for chance. Within this structure, the weight of precision is not only perfection, it is the possibility that with the slightest of movements, everything can fall apart.
And if it does, the main thing, Kafka suggests, “is to accept the coldness of the sword with the coldness of a stone” (Blue Octavo Notebooks, 1917-19). Amor’s work, which takes its title from these solemnly stoic words of advice, makes games out of the fall. She’s telling us it’s a set up, a virtual entrapping of our own – to laud perfection, to seek control without forgiving chance. It’s a practical trap that from the outside appears ornately spellbinding and seductive to explore. According to Greek mythology, the labyrinth was built by Daedalus to entrap the Minotaur, a creature with the head and tail of a bull and the body of a man. The labyrinth, so elaborate and confusing in design, succeeded in capturing the creature yet bewildered Daedalus to such a degree that he barely managed to escape his own weapon of control. Constructed from waterjet cut marble and fixed upon undulating stainless steel sword legs, Amor’s own labyrinth posits only one way in and no way out. The curving, sharp-edged membranes of the structure threaten to slice through visions of conquest whilst dancing in jest to the rhythm of deception.
The slow dance between letting go and wanting to be the master of one’s own fate is symbolised in the pallid roulette wheel of Penney’s work ‘I would never tread with confidence of anything but failure’. Aligned with the wheel is a steel ball propped upon an ash timber ledge, preordained to meet the bullseye of the image like an arrow shooting towards its target. The game of roulette was designed to give casinos an edge, meaning that over a long time players should lose slightly more than they win. With the odds stacked against you, it is sheer luck that holds the key to procuring any faith in success. Integrally stabilised and held within cleverly angled frames, Penney celebrates the right to fail when the odds simply smile at you and say “better luck next time”.