Artist: Andy Boot
Exhibition title: Midday Hour
Venue: Minerva, Sydney, Australia
Date: February 7 – March 21, 2015
Photography: Courtesy of the artist and Minerva, Sydney
Midday Hour. A time defined by the flatness of light: characteristically vague, it is the hour of indeterminates. The day is at the midpoint; where an absence of shadows gives no clue to future or past. Talkback radio occupies the background; coffee is prepared; and two scientists discuss the average colour of the universe as seen from earth: “Our data initially suggested turquoise: a result that proved inaccurate, skewed by the influence of shadows. In the end, the average is a shade of beige. A colour we have labeled ‘Cosmic Latte’”. An advertisement interrupts the discussion. Part of a schedule that segments the day.
Boot drops watercolour-dipped noodles onto canvas to mimic the aesthetics of spam mail. These random, unwanted intrusions utilise digital ‘confetti’ to camouflage their true content, thus safeguarding their circulation. But underneath the noodle stains there is no message. The unprimed canvas is an average colour, a middle grey, a colour that spans our universe.
Every map is an abstracted partition of space: where landscape becomes line. The steel cylinders positioned on the floor describe a casual topography of the local area. Split across the chambers in order of height, the map loses its sense of direction in the incisions made by precisely directed lasers.
Viewed through a false wall full of holes—painted in the mistaken colour of the universe—the division between foreground and background is ambiguous. When exactly does the midday hour begin and end?
In the midday hour Boot pulls at shadows and gradients, tugging at their logic until camouflage is made conspicuous. In the midday hour there is no front or back, you are stuck in the middle with you.
