Simeon Nelson

World Between

Out of a circular shallow pool, deep green in colour and clogged with gum leaves and jewel like specks of plastic rises  a vertical square module ,2.5,2.5 m supported on a spindly steel A frame. like an advertising billboard or the scoreboard from a deserted suburban sports ground. Within this module compartments of decreasing size and increasing number radiate from a central blank square, a branching tree is vivisected, then forced into this artificial period doubling structure, parallels nature and culture along side each other, period doubling of nature, ie a branching tree is vivisected, then forced into artificial period doubling structure, the vertical mandala in the pool, like cross section of plant stem under microscope, self similarity at different scales, unit of structure or organisation, Koestler, Holon, Holarchy. I am fascinated by the differing topologies at the nano and the macro scale, the transient vibratory dance of atoms on thier lattices and the complex space-time warps around black holes or the interactions between galactic clusters. The fuzzy edge of witer trees against the sky or the 60000 kms of blood vessels in body or the 5 hectares of surface area of the alveoli in the lungs. The most fundamental units of nature are not substances but events.

These images of the behaviour of matter are for me metaphors for the social and political dimensions of human behaviour. They echo the current state of global politics and society which has been described in terms of decentralised, fragmented, distributed power structures. The notion of truth, one that was perhaps simpler and more universal in more centralised societies has splintered into a kaliedescope of versions. TheEucalypt Mandala branches into finer and finer  forks, each fork and box being half the size of the preceding fork  and box so that at the outer edges there is a very fuzzy boundary between the space around it and the thing itself , refutation of a polarity between absolute space and solid matter,My body, which I perceive as substance, is in fact an organisation of infinitely complex, overlapping , imbricated structures, radiant light their manifestation, the ‘body’ a tall column of light and blood-heat, a temporary agreement among atoms, a nas lecturer complained that I had 2 bob each way with this piece, he was absolutely right but what he saw as a problem I see as the essential characteristic of my work, an ambiguity, an endless internal dialogue about my own relationship to nature and culture.

I do not make claims for the authenticity or realness of my experience of nature, it is too mingled with my cultural attitudes. Nature is no great mother who has borne us. She is our creation. it is in our brain that she quickens to life. Things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the arts that have influenced us. To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing....At present people see fogs, not because there are fogs, but because poets and painters have taught them  the mysterious loveliness of such effects. There may have been fogs for centuries in London, I dare say there were. But no one saw them. They did not exist until art had invented them...Yesterday evening Mrs Arundel insisted on me going to the window and looking at the glorious sky, as she called it. And so I had to look at it... And what was it? It was simply a second rate Turner, a Turner of a bad period, with all the painters worst faults exaggerated and over-emphasised.  I do make claims for the possibility to see patterns emerging from observations of the world that have a huge aesthetic power and emotional effect. These branchings, symmetries and numerical constants resonate throughout nature and are codified and categorised by  scientists and used by artists in an ongoing atempt to make sense of the world.