liminal, signs; signified
Duncan of Jordanstone Degree Show, Dundee, Scotland, 2016foil balloons, helium, voile bag, dust, text
Two days after the artist’s brother’s death, two balloons appeared in a tree outside their mother’s window, carrying the messages “goodbye” and “sorry you are leaving.” This work emerges from that encounter.
The installation consists of helium-filled foil balloons bearing the same phrases. They move slowly through the space, drifting, shifting position, never fully still, they react to the air created by people entering and leaving the space. Their motion is animated by a presence that feels both intentional and incidental, as if guided by an outside force.
Each balloon is tethered by a voile bag containing dust gathered from the brother’s home. The dust anchors them lightly, holding them in relation to the ground while allowing movement to continue. It acts as both weight and a bodily trace, a material that carries the residue of a lived space, though what it holds cannot be fully known.
Language enters the work through the printed text, offering statements that appear direct and intimate, often given to someone moving on from a job or a place. The words might be read as messages, coincidences, projections or signs, never settling into a single interpretation. They hover between sign and signified, between what is seen and what is understood.
The work moves within a space of suspension between presence and absence, message and meaning. It doesn’t attempt to resolve whether something is being communicated, but instead attends to the conditions under which meaning is sought, felt, or imagined.
