Cleavemark Dr. at Fort Gondo

The door is unlocked and I let myself in the gallery. I close the door behind me and I am alone in the space. Sun yellows the room, a gallery has transformed into a sitting room from far away unidentified time. To my right, music is playing from an old hi-fi cabinet. I say it is old, but the stereo is just  in the time of the room I have found myself surrounded. In my investigation of  the exhibition, Cleavemark Dr., a collaboration between artist Cheryl Wassenaar and poet Stephanie Schlaifer, words and memories solidify and land before me.

“She said she need me when I come…”

The sound of recorded dog barks come from the other side of the room.

“I am just going…”

I move counter-clockwise around the room. I meet a collection of objects cast out of sugar. There are cookie like shapes set on trays. Then objects that are more heavy absence, an inverse shape of an iron, of a date stamper, a door handle. Moving to my left, I greet a wall of light switch casings encrusted in salt – the cases have been formally placed on the wall. Their salty armor indicates the passage of time, indicates that they are from somewhere else, that you are now in the somewhere else, in this place where the air attacks objects and this is the evidence it leaves.  Now the sound of a train, I think it is a recorded sound but I suspend this belief, and believe the train must be just down the hill from behind the house in which this room exists . Yellow tubing comes down off the wall and back up connecting with a grid of kilowatt meters. I hear harmonica. I come to a tall and narrow section of wall painted grey. Text  like train cars covers the wall. I read the text:

(ɹǝuuıɥʇ)

“Will the circle be unbroken, by and by, lord, by and by…”

I am lazy and read what is next immediately at eye level.

the short side where they come

“in the sky, lord, in the sky…”

Harmonica again, then the dog bark. There is a framed tea towel on the back wall embroidered with the words,”pecked at i am full of tossing full of birds.” Text is image, text is object, sound becomes text.

I come to a door full top to bottom with yellow spools of thread enrobed in a white glue, white sugar, spackle frosting.

“my heavenly home, my spirit..the holy one, I hear the loss of thee…”

Oversized wall text I wrote down in my notebook from the back wall of the gallery, the wall and window in the wall splits some of the words and letters (fix)

CES WIND AROUND I

AT THE SOUND HOW LOFTY
ARE

HOW HIGH

“immortal home…”

THE EYELIDS

A LION

IN YOUR M

OUTH

IN THE STREET

TO DARKNESS

DOOR TO DOOR

I AM FULL OF BIRDS

Teacups with yellow circle bottom insides replace meters in a second wall grid invaded with now familiar yellow tubing. The dog barks another time. A chair covered in sugar as i face the front of the gallery. To my right the wall reads:

THE NORTH PRODUC

PRODUCES RAI

A BIRD BTATCINA

ONE RIS
OF BIRDS

THE IR EYES
LIFTING
THERE

“amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me

i once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now, i see…”

SALIC

THE LIGHT

THEY SAY

IS NEAR

(Train whistle)

THEY SHUI

IEKING UT

PECKED AT OF TOSSING

Vinyl wording continues to the front windows of the room and the words cast their shadow on to the western wall of the gallery of my right.

(Train)

“amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me

i once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now, i see…”

I walk towards the door and exit the gallery into the light.

Images courtesy of Fort Gondo.