Rocks in exile monument
Photography Cassie Sullivan and courtesy of Art farm Birchs Bay.
This piece is a commemoration monument as well as a Sanctuary for all the rocks in exile. Selected for their glory, beauty, uniqueness, utility at the time, rocks got picked up in a daily basis from "natural habitat" They crowd our pockets, tingling for a minute the melody of preciousness. More than often, the appreciation is short lived and they end up stuffed in the ashtray of our car, on a dusty window seal, in an anonymous flower pot, in an unknown garden or fatally to the bin.
This monument redeemed all the lost rocks by giving them a safe and legitimate new place to stand, a place which also become the responsibility of the artist . People are invited to come and offer lost rocks to the accumulating installation.
This piece questioned in an active way our need to possess as human. Often observing, without wanting and leaping to possess what we find desirable, is not enough. Paradoxically, removing the object of desire from its context often lead to the lost of preciousness in our relationship with the object and to the object itself. It also causes real damages and impoverishment of natural and human ecosystems.
Still, we pick the rock again, and again and again and again. Filling our pockets with the brief tingling sound of un-refrained envy and need of trophies.
