Handshake at The Orozco Garden.

First put aside the desire to judge immediately; acquire the habit of just looking. Second, do not treat the object as an object of the intellect. Third, just be ready to receive passively, without interposing yourself. If you can void your mind of all intellectualization, like a clear mirror that simply reflects, all the better.

The guide does not walk ahead of you, but walks with you.  

–The unknown Craftsman (1940)

Saludo, which translates to ‘Handshake’, is printed evidence on stone lithograph of the indeterminant factors that take place while creating and recreating an image by the process of printing and by gathering meaning and spectators. In the printed work, a figure changes and appears animated as a result of making various copies of it, reminding a ghostly encounter with a familiar entity.

Fish and Chips / 2023 / Double exposure negative (digital scan)

The following plan outlines the steps for interacting with my publication ‘Handshake’,  where each participant will listen to a guided visit to the site Orozco Garden at the South London Galleries in the context of the 2024 MA Fine Art degree Research Festival titled Unresolve. 

Each participant will take a single copy of the many lithograph prints on newsprint paper hanging on clip hangers from a wire stretching across the Clore studio. Instructions on how to interact will be printed on the side opposite to the participant’s collected print. As they are instructed to scan a QR on their device, each participant will enter the garden individually and play an approximately 3-minute-long sound piece (either on their device or on an mp3 player and headphone available TBC) which will instruct them to take a moment and become aware of their perceptions while visiting the site freely. The purpose of this exercise involves engaging in an active, creative experience of observation while asking the viewer to take the time to monitor their perceptions during the visit, and what  they might reflect.

In exchange for taking the lithograph copy of Saludo (‘Handshake’) on newsprint, upon reentry, participants will be asked to offer their written response to a final question as a form of closure. Each individual entry will contribute to a collaborative account of several individual experiences at the Orozco Garden. 

The sound piece will be a recording of the following page. 

Note: Please consider these instructions can be followed wherever outside the context of the workshop and have been projected to apply while in any safe space. If you have a few minutes to yourself, just be mindful of your surroundings and feel free to practice this brief exercise too by clicking here.

 

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–Hi!

–If you’re listening to this, I bet you’re in a garden right now.

–Take a few deep breaths.

–There must be an architecture, or a kind of design for you to navigate this place. By now, you might’ve noticed the boundaries of the garden, and the space that’s now surrounding you. Surely there’s a hedge, if not a window somewhere, so you know that some of the interactions going on here are somehow beyond your reach, at least for this moment. 

–What is there inside the garden? Are there any forms arranged, intertwined, interacting in any way? Does anything look odd? Does anything actually look familiar? Perhaps a lot of it looks still, dormant; maybe some of what’s there is now hidden. 

–Let’s say a garden is a space that has been arranged somehow. Not sure if it’s exactly under control. But, it was definitely arranged to a degree. 

–Consider that if it were under control, perhaps you wouldn’t be there, where you are, as you are. So the garden has been arranged allowing you the chance to interact with, and move freely, just as you are in this moment. 

–Wherever you went, did you notice anything happening? 

–Did anything specific called to your attention?

–Of all of the things taking place in there, this one must be calling to you. 

–Hold it with you for just a moment.

(. . .)

–What is it saying? 

 

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In an effort to gather a collection of personal reflections with a specific site (The Orozco Garden) and time (Early December, 2024), the compiled record of the many voices will point towards a variety of themes, events, ideas like signals acknowledging different coordinates, perhaps as a sample of the collective consciousness.

 

 

Saludo / 2023-24 / Stone lithographs on newsprint (23 x 38 cm)