Local Produce
The Macquarie Dictionary defines Aluminium as a silver-white metallic element, light in weight, ductile (that is, capable of being hammered out thin, and able to stand deformation under a load without fracture), malleable (that is, capable of being extended or shaped by hammering or by pressure with rollers) and not readily oxidised or tarnished. It occurs combined in nature in igneous rocks, shales, clays, and most soils. It is widely used in alloys and for lightweight utensils, castings, aeroplane parts, etc.
The aluminium made from alumina (the oxide of aluminium, found mostly as bauxite) at the Tomago plant near Newcastle is produced in various kinds, with varying alloy content to suit different purposes. Aluminium is used extensively in the building industry with aluminium window frames, for example, and in the beverage industry for drink cans. There are billets, ingots and slabs, which vary in size and shape. The slabs which we have used at Customs House – weighing an average of six tonnes each – are used for making alfoil. The combined weight of the eight slabs is 48 tonnes.
Aluminium foil is an expensive looking material. At the supermarket, I bought a 70 metre roll, 30 cm wide, for $10. This is discounted because of the large length – it weighs 670 grams. We have calculated that 48 tonnes of aluminium will make 6000 kilometres of aluminium foil of this width. If 70 metres costs $10 retail, then the retail value of 6000 kilometres should be a bit over 857 thousand dollars. The wholesale value of the eight slabs is more like $125.000.
Aluminium foil looks like perfection, like a promise of protection, like a glittering wrap, all surface, shimmering with attraction, reflecting the material world around itself. When you pull it from its roll, and tear on the convenient serrated metal edge to the cardboard package, the endless roll becomes segmented into domestic scale, into useable slices of metal sheet which the kitchen adores: wrapping and baking apples and fish, covering the roasting pan, sealing freshness inside for the freezer’s delayed gratifications. It is an obsessive package. It is a all consumer lust. Stare into the mirror of the foil, and see consumption not redemption. This dense materiality, this lightness, this disposable brilliance — marker of time, mortality, appetite, desire. Marker of cleanliness, germ-free guarantees, pulled, stretched out, torn off, folded, shaped around things, peeled off from things, re-exposing the protected, then simply crushed. Crush. Disposed, into the bin, and away to landfill.
All of this heaviness, this weight and seriousness of the solid, this bulk and hardiness, this scale and the apparent permanence of the hefty slabs, all of this leads to a metamorphosis to the insubstantial, to disappearance.
There are no words or letters made with the slabs. Perhaps writing is frozen speech, and the sun warming the slabs out there in the plaza in front of old Customs House makes conversation swing into the breeze. The work is all implication. What is this, where is it from, who put it here, how is it made, why? Why this not that? Where to now?
Sculpture is about place as well as space and solid forms. Sculpture is also a relationship with the body of each person experiencing it, as they move through the surrounding dimensions of its occurrence.
This aluminium sits for a moment between states. It was bauxite ore, then alumina, now aluminium alloy, and will soon be aluminium foil. All of its presence is temporary, it is in a state between states. Think of all the alfoil reflecting in the sun. Think how much electricity it took to make this fanciful foil. It is another folly. We are fossil fools.
This is Local Produce, made and ready to ship. Locality is all. There is no there there. It is all here.
