PHYLLIDA BLUEMEL, 2017
phyllidabluemel.co.uk

“If the world is gratuitous, then the fringe of a goldfish’s fin is a million times more so”

"Forays into mystery cut bays and fine fjords, but the forested mainland itself is implacable both in its bulk and in its most filigreed fringe of detail."
Annie Dillard – Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

“The general form of propositions is: this is how things are.” – that is the kind of proposition that one repeats to oneself countless times. One thinks that one is tracing the outline of a thing’s nature over and over again, and one is merely tracing round the frame through which we look at it."

"We have got onto slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk: so we need friction. Back to the rough ground!"
Ludwig Wittgenstein – Philosophical Investigations

During my time at residency 108 I wanted to try new ways of looking; to focus on ‘the rough ground’. I went like a logician into the illogical forest. I drew with flattened and diagrammatic lines to abstract and map out the holes, specks, bites, fringes, overlaps and edges gathered from across the acres. I purposefully let in ambiguities of scale and identity.

By imposing arbitrary structures and organizing systems upon the tiniest shreds of a small ecosystem, I played with making visible the transparent framing structures through which we encounter our surroundings; critically foregrounding the inevitable reduction of nature in language and culture, whilst undeniably succumbing to its allure. The drawings are pleasing, yet pointless, maps; figures for a book-work on the philosophy of language, and nature.