Distant Measures
The first thing that strikes you about this work is the blue. Mira Gojak’s works appear as a series of light blue forms punctuating the gallery space: leaning, slouching, or even scurrying across the room. In these and other recent works Gojak has drawn from the sky. On a residency in Spain she looked up at the clear blue sky and saw a chance drawing: a contrail. These trace-lines are temporary frozen bands of vapour, produced by airplanes under certain conditions. The lines are the residue of many bodies, contained and travelling anywhere. In working with this formal interruption to the blue Gojak is also attempting to measure the anywhere space of the sky, and to contain it. The titles of previous works, Take 14 minutes (2015) and Take 16 days (2015) indicated a measure of time. These new forms contain a measure of distance: the distance to the colour blue, or the distance to the colour black. These measurements have been carefully preserved in the woollen material of the work. Gojak has weighed out her materials. This is the amount of line you would need to reach our outer atmosphere, and then return to the earth.
Gojak has stated that in preserving these measurements she has attempted to index the works to the real, to something in the world, but I cannot help but think of the arbitrary nature of containers of time and distance. The atmosphere may be a measurable distance from the spot where we stand, but what does this mean to us in an embodied sense? I would prefer to index these works to the body, or to a specific body: to the lived experience of