Silvering (slowly)
Carl Douglas, Sue Gallagher, Rafik Patel, Nooroa Tapuni + Emily O'Hara
ST Paul St Gallery III
10-13 Sep, 2020
Silver tongued. Silver coated. Acts of silvering occur in various time scales. The silvering of hair from the temple to the crown. The bleaching of timber in sunlight. Layers of graphite silvering the page. The gilded moon reflecting the orbiting passage of light-bodies. The silvering of cities, kaleidoscopic corporate towers awash with silver particles. Silver makes glass into mirrors: voracious, prolific and unsettling surfaces:
I see them as infinite, elemental Executors of an ancient pact,
To multiply the world like the act
Of begetting. Sleepless. Bringing doom. They prolong this hollow, unstable world In their dizzying spider’s-web
(Borges, ‘Mirrors’, 1985)
If a mirror is the frightening multiplier of worlds and the elemental executor of an ancient pact - then metallic silver is the material instigator and silvering is its process. Drawing in the world, pulling its surroundings into itself, mirrors figure the shiftiness of relational things. Everything is connected by invisible threads of relation. To make space is not to work in secure isolation,