28 Critical Reflections: random 1 t0 7
"Shut up", I told the breakfast table. "I asked for coffee and waffles, not your dream from last night."
I finished my breakfast in a silence that was, I suspect, sulky on one side. "Reflective surfaces, huh? Sometimes they can get above themselves."[2]
Shiny, and streamlined. With fairings, you know? And fins. All around them, people flying on their own, individually, with some kind of back-pack... jet, I think. No noise. Even the birds weren't disturbed, darting and swooping amid the human flocks.[2]
And the play of inside against/with outside, the seeing through, the laid bare view, makes everything that is around part of the sculpture too.[4]
So, anyway, the people. Their clothes were shiny too, but lots of different colours. Skin-tight. They wore helmets with stubby aerials, and goggles. But the goggles had lines of information flickering across them.[2]
Oh yes, there were birds, but not like the birds you see today. Big as eagles and coloured like kingfishers. They roosted on the ledges of the towers, and under the ramps. Long curving ribbon ramps, with... Obviously these were too heavy to fly, so they had to go on the roads. Very fast. Automated, of course.[2]
What alien/other peoples from other-worldly, past or future cultures would have made such a grouping of monolithic structures out of aluminium, brushed or stainless steel? The alien, the natural, the primitive, the advanced coincide in Hepworth's works and garden.[4]
The gallery is a lovely bright space, all white-painted wood and high ceilings, with a few stunning pieces, but the garden's the real show-stopper here. It's quite small, but full of amazing and very varied sculptures, placed far enough apart that you can enjoy each one individually, but close enough together that you can get really interesting perspectives of three or four at once.[8]
28 Critical Reflections random 8 to 14
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Sources
[1] http://www.neworleanspast.com/art/id62.html
[2] Ken MacLeod, Reflective Surfaces, New Scientist, 2009.
[3] Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics, Indiana University Press, 1979.
[4] Clive Fencott, Reflections on seeing River Form in Barbra Hepworth's garden in St. Ives.
[5] http://www.flickr.com/photos/nigelhomer/316548379/
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specular_highlight