THE SUNSET LEXICON
Pentagonal table with lights and acrylic inserts (1.8 x 1.8 x .5 metres).
Assorted other ephemera. Books, catalogue, tin shapes.
2024.
As one of the winners of Bath Spa University's Porthleven Prize, I was tasked with making a piece of work on the subject of provenance.
This became a set of 85 icons, titled the Sunset Lexicon, split into 5 groups of 17, which were produced as playing cards, in book form, and as the Sunset Lexicon table. Visitors to the gallery were encouraged to spin number wheels, make 5 pencil rubbings and then send a photo of the paper to an instagram account, where the images were decoded and a report then presented. While the outcomes of this aleatory process and the arbitrary readings were not to be considered entirely seriously, they were worked on as though they were real, and during the exhibition a number of interests things happened.
The Sunset Lexion was also responsible for manifesting the presence of the actual international popular music star Dua Lipa in Origins coffee shop on the second morning of the exhibition. She seemed to be having a nice time, despite customers secretly taking pictures of her, so we didn't mention the work, nor the fact that she appeared in the description for card 36, The Mermaid, which was taken from the wall murals at Breage church, not a million miles away from where she, and we, were stood.
The project was inspired by an earlier book, The Unearned Increment, the sole copy of which was thrown into the sea from the end of the pier during the first Porthleven residency in January 2024. This book described a miserable few years when I nearly died, my mother did actually die, and reflected on the death of my father, and a walk from the house where I grew up in Hook outside Basingstoke to Bath in North East Somerset where I currently live. I had recently discharged myself from hospital suffering from a giant arm, and on reflection I probably shouldn't have done it.
Above, the Sunset Lexicon in the Tides that Bind exhibition, Porthleven, Cornwall, August 2024.
The Sunset Lexicon at the Michael Pennie Gallery in Bath. The table and ephemera were given the rear space at the back of the gallery, where it could exist, shrouded in darkness. When I was invigilating, if people asked what was behind the curtain, I told them it was where they kept the hoover.
The 85 cards of the Sunset Lexicon.
Lady Clifford's visitor book, which featured all the information required to decode the icons for readings.
The Sunset Lexicon mind map. Geographic locations and connections with a bewildering series of red threads.
So many that the whole thing becomes very close to meaningless.