Grids
2nd July - 12th July 26
Art in Perpetuity Trust, 6 Creekside, London.
with Boudicca Paloma
Various Information
The word ROBOT comes from the Czech word ROBOTA which comes from the Slavic root RAB which translates to the English words SLAVE or SERVITUDE. The word ESPRESSO does not mean fast. Rather it means PRESSED OUT or FORCED THROUGH. It comes from the Italian esprimere. To express, to squeeze the essence from.
The GOLDEN TOAD or incilius periglenes was discovered in 1966, last seen in 1989 and declared extinct in 1994. Found only in a four-square-kilometre area of cloud forest in Costa Rica and bred in temporary pools. The male’s extraordinary orange-gold colouration served no camouflage function whatsoever. The cause of extinction was the chytrid fungus, accelerated by climate change reducing moisture in the cloud forests.
The NATTERJACK TOAD is the rarest amphibian in Britain. It runs rather than hops and calls at night with extraordinary volume for its size, a sound that can be heard over a mile away. The males call from the edges of shallow pools to attract females. The call has been compared to a football rattle.
In the 1930s, FUTURISM combined with Mussolini’s FASCISM to create fertile ground(s) for the invention of the MOKA POT. Italy had a rich supply of bauxite and leucite, used for the production of aluminium. This would become the national metal of Italy, fortified by FUTURISM’s reverence for machines, technology, and metallic modernity. Alfonso Bialetti invented the MOKA POT in 1933 after looking at his wife’s
1) aluminium laundry boiler and
2) dimensional, hourglass physique.
Alfonso’s son Renato was held at a German prisoner of war camp until 1946, when he returned to take over his father’s shop. Renato is mainly responsible for the Moka Express’s success. After World War II, there was a surplus of factories and skilled manufacturers. Renato decided to focus solely on the Moka Express and began mass production.
Renato Bialetti's ashes were placed inside a large Moka Express and buried in the family tomb in Omegna, 2016.
The Infinite Croak
Inside-outside fibrous lattices flatten right up to the eye, optical illusory whorling foaming and artificial. The gappy petals… The yolky pollen. Thick, breathy matrices of oily daisies. Un-condemnation of the Anthropocene. Elsewhere things move around the space; bodies segment and ready themselves for transformation, part by part, in the alchemical fire. Or the Permanent Water. Myth secretes into modernity, seeps along the mucous membrane.
The toad plays the role of the shadow, the inferior part of the personality. The toad symbolises the First Matter of the Great Work. A wet sodden sigil. He is an organic laboratory / chemical crucible. His screaming orange-peel skins leach away. Though we adore him, we shall never enjoy His beauteous Croak. And inside his eyes, the universe.
Mythic Mojo once said:
Close to the ground means close to the source. Burrowing, the earth, the womb, the place of gestation. Where you plant a seed. And what can the toad swallow? Seems a toad can make use of a great many different materials. How are they held inside. What is derived or birthed from them? If the toad is close to the primal, to the unformed and undifferentiated, is it then a symbol for possibility?
Objects Step on the Throats of Men
The DOMESTIC COFFEE MAKER is a machine and a head. He has no face, only body and so is submitted to the thing-like existence. In any case the commodity can only be understood in its undistorted essence when it becomes the universal category of society as a whole. He is a steaming engine of pure productivity all swallowed up.
In the test kitchen of materiality, characteristic gurgling noises bubble plummy grey liquid through the gap in his lid. Spiral C-Carrot, cheap, ephemeral, non-committal. Winking earnestly alongside voiceless monoliths and blocky, patient beasties. Everywhere dream green, nightmare green. Trouble marches sneakily around the corner. The mirepoix sacrifices itself to the substrate and filters out as detached A. B.. C… ....s.
Writing by Georgia Anna Bloom
Documentation by Benjamin Deakin