Sixth Exhibition
Collections are material autobiography, written as we go along and left behind us as our monument.” (Material Identities, Susan M Pearce, On Collecting).
After the widely acclaimed installations, ‘Bird Cage’ and ‘I Could Take Off And Land Innumerable Times In A Day’ in 2006, Steggals extends her unique play of phenomenal installation in Mr. Eagle 11.
Most of us can relate to having collected something if only as a child. In some cases one can say that individuals collect in order to make sense of or control a small part of the chaos around them. Others clearly create their own identity with and through their collection of belongings. Mr. Eagle 11 fills the gulf between our imaginary world and its reality. His fictitious life exists in all of us, yet he is precisely his own person with his own belongings, memories, structures and history. Just as Meursault in Camus’s L’Etranger (the outsider) seems alienated from the world so too is Mr. Eagle 11, seeking and grasping for some sign of meaning in the world.
His chosen tool to do so has manifested itself in the form of looking; what is it that he cannot see? Or, is it us that cannot see and he who is trying to show us something? Nonetheless we can ascertain that Mr. Eagle 11’s process is quite clear: a meticulous collection of lenses (547 to be exact) which are placed, ordered or archived into groupings of shape, size and effect. He seems to be fascinated with the fallacy of the eye as if ‘the eye’, continually refuses to show us the truth and that truth (for him) can only be gained from physical experience itself in which he seems to perhaps, intentionally or unknowingly have cut all ties. Thus his investment is in the less animate of objects, the lens to enhance, distort and idealise his vision of the world.
Walking into the gloomy room, viewers are left to interpret the oddly scientific diagrammatic drawings, log books, and photo studies of eye examinations in what seems to be his study or living space. Amongst the world of convex, concave, prisms and lenses we see that the personal archive of daily living has also become part of his obsessive collecting behaviour.
There is a certain theatricality, which links all Steggals’ work, performances and installations as well as the vital link of the collection. The narrative is nowhere more apparent than in Mr. Eagle 11 where the character strives to question, depict and make apparent our need for identity through the objects around us. The show also exposes our illogical desire for order through collecting and deals with the themes of “desire/nostalgia, saving and loss, the urge to erect a permanent and complete system against the destructiveness of time.” (The Cultures of Collecting By John Elsner, Roger Cardinal)
18 June – 28 July 2007
