An installation by Anne Lord
Absence resonated with the stillness of Buddha—even amid the hustle, bustle, and heat of the opening. Absence took place in the main space of Umbrella Studio, Townsville, which has soaring white walls, wooden floors and shopfront windows. In this space, the plastic and the ice Buddha of the installation resonated in tune with the glass.
Entering Absence, the first few viewers trod lightly; disconcerted by the clear plastic, not sure that it was opening night, not sure that the painters had left. The wind entered too, billowing beneath the plastic and creating a three-dimensional air-filled landscape. Slowly a crowd assembled.
Absence seeped into the viewers’ consciousness, creating a ripple of emotion. This effect was heightened by the performance: a head and shoulder-shaped block of ice sat in a clear plastic suitcase and melted in the tropical north Queensland heat. On the white walls were six digital prints (each 160 cm x 126 cm) of Buddha sculptures in the caves at Da Tong, to the west of Beijing. Lord chose to have large format images created of these particular Buddha sculptures because they are eroding. In her opening speech, she reminded her audience that the installation was ephemeral and likened it to the decomposing Buddha sculptures, circa 500 CE. ‘The ice’, she said, ‘is a tribute to the way Buddhism is about ephemera and letting things go’.
Disappearing Buddha melted slowly, despite the heat. Lord had worked for two months, forming this bust into a likeness of the digitally printed images, and now it sloughed off its most recent memories, revealing the course of its shaping, stage by stage. People in the opening night audience fanned themselves with catalogues and... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline