begin

In the beginning, 2005

Installation and performance
Book pages, muslin, table, chair, ink
A beating heart,
Devonport Regional Gallery, 2005

In the beginning... reworks an earlier performance installation held at Linden Contemporary Art Gallery in 2001. It is dominated by a huge stack of ripped book pages that have been rebundled with muslin strips so they cannot be read, thus denying access to the wisdom and knowledge they promise to contain.

The installation was accompanied by a ritualistic writing performance, in which I wrote the words In the beginningover loose book pages and then tossed them to the floor. The phrase evokes the creative power of the word and the past lives of Devonport Regional Gallery as a library and a church.