Small Death

Look under your feet
Look closely before you die (1)

There is much in this life that remains unseen. In Necromancy what is beneath our vision is brought to eye level and frozen in time, offering us point blank an invitation to share in a moment from an unseen world. From just beyond death these citizens of a microcosmos whisper to us of what is precious in life. Shall we listen? Necromancy is a celebration of intimate moments with small things and as Arundhati Roy reminds us, there is a special god just for small things. (2)

Gaston Bachelard (3) eloquently proposes that intimacy makes us aware of all else. By becoming focused on the minute (min’-ut’) we become inherently aware of all existence. When we look intently at the vein in a leaf we can feel the rest of the universe becoming larger over our shoulder. I am reminded here of the spirals in chaos theory which show us that the smaller things in life (replicate) reflect the bigger picture. In the spirit of this, a flower petal or insect’s antennae recall birth, life and death, in short, the cycle of life. Heightened through their brief life expectancy, the metaphors in this exhibition hit home as we ponder our own meandering usage of time.

The need for time to look closely is inherent in the semiotics of the miniature. Miniature holds a minute (min’-it) to look at the minute (min’-ut’). Miniatures demand we take time out from our day to investigate particular details. They demand a certain type of physical interactivity. One must surround a miniature to extract its essence. The same approach is needed for both the subject and the object in this instance, it is an effort of scrutiny to get up close and personal. But in intimacy we create precious moments. Each min’-it caught stops the flow of time and each min’-ut’ detail caught alters our visual perception. I say caught intentionally as here the ‘minutes’ are cast, indeed the die are cast. And in the death throws the end recalls the journey.

There are two parallel journeys here. The shortness of the subject’s journey (a season, a week or even a day) offers strong contrast to the length of time invested in each object. The casting process involved in Necromancy is time laborious and the detail and finish arrived at for each piece bears testimony to the amount of intimate hours spent at the workbench. But there is an interesting paradox within this work as the alchemical processes are deliberately disrupted. Alchemy defines the precious in life by attempting to turn everything to gold, yet here the value of metals is disrupted by the vagrant corrupting of alloys. So what is precious, mined mineral wealth or a moment spent in intimate reflection?

Necromancy – they pierce the wall, coming from the other side to whisper in our ears. The magic of divination through the dead. The poetry here is to be reminded of the precious things in life by two things which evade our consciousness; small death.
No animal or plant has been harmed in the making of this exhibition.1 From the music to Microcosmos, France, 1997.
2 The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy, Random House, New York, 1997.
3 The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard, Beacon Press, Boston, 1964.

Ric Spencer

Ric Spencer is an artist and writer who holds a First Class Honours Degree from Glasgow School of Art and Curtin University. He is currently lecturing in, and First Year Co-ordinator of, Visual Culture at Curtin University School of Art and is undertaking a Doctorate of Creative Arts also at Curtin University.