Ecart

An ecart, a temporary host
space, a long overdue and
belated delivery arrives
intact and invincible.
Subjected to scrutiny
and inspection,
surface scratches appear,
revealing a possible history
behind their causes.
Held in storage,
missing in action,
awaiting future reference
and usage later on.

Ecart is cast from a found object — an industrial polypropylene pallet. It caught my attention because, when I first saw it lying around, I didn’t know where it had come from. I admit: I stole it.

When conceiving a title, Ecart worked nicely with some things I was pondering at the time. It refers to a ‘cart’ or maybe even ‘carting things around’. Quite a traditional view of the object, but then, such objects are increasingly being used due to the rise of internet based delivery systems.

I am fascinated by what the role of an object is — its aesthetic function (for example, how it operates in a gallery) and its utilitarian function.

I explore site and utility, and take a questioning approach to delving into the role of an object and how it operates in the world. This work straddles both the aesthetic and functional. It operates within an exhibition space, but it somehow belongs to the world — or maybe it belongs to neither, exactly because of the relationship between its form and altered material. It’s almost as though someone made a mistake, they forgot to remove some packaging, or transit material, after a gallery install.