THE RETURN BEYOND WHICH THERE IS NO POINT (2017-18)


The Return Beyond Which There is No Point is a fluid grouping of fragments including: a machine embroidered flag I designed and commissioned while in Kyiv, Ukraine in autumn 2017; documentation of the circuitous and technologically and financially compromised process of having the flag made; a performance of carrying the flag through Kyiv and the surrounding forest before raising it on the roof of the same building in which it had started; a moving-image work based on this performance; a text considering 'the return beyond which there is no point' within and beyond the immediate context; and a sound work made in collaboration with a musician-producer in response to this text.

Soundscape (collaboration with Dave Pilcher)
_{(Why not listen while viewing the visual material below?)}

Moving-image

Text

I returned to Ukraine in March 2018 to form an installation from an arrangement of some of the elements of The Return Beyond Which There is No Point for exhibition at Yermilov Centre, Kharkiv. The installation comprised the flag; its daily delegated carrying and varying repositioning by invigilators (without instruction); the text presented on the wall at a large scale; a single image from my previous performance of carrying the flag myself (sat at a Kyiv tram stop alongside some men who appear to have been in a fight - the performance took place on 'Defender of Ukraine Day'); and the soundscape filling the otherwise relatively empty space.


Installation at Yermilov Centre, Kharkiv, Ukraine (2018)
_{(soundscape also playing)}

_{Unprescribed flag carrying
(Invigilators' mobile phone footage)}

Files from correspondance with embroiderers