The original vessels, shattered and scattered themselves into space. This event is known in the Lurianic texts as “shevirat ha-qelim,” or the “breaking of the vessels.” In the wake of this event, the light that had been contained within them returned to their divine source, while the remainder fell as broken shards. From these shards the powers of the qelipot, that is, “husks” or “shells” were produced. These broken shards signify the material world and what can be collected, amassed and clustered in response to the specific characteristics of our material condition. Just as, all things return to olam ha-tikkun, literally “the world of repair,” a world restored to its perfect status.
I employ materials gathered from urban environments; remnants of wood, metal, stone and other re-purposed items; all of which are part of an ongoing inquiry into the life of materials and their dynamic potential. As I gather and construct; these vessels or patterned documents form a contemplative arrangement of islands (islands within islands) and I am deliberating the Japanese notion of ‘mono no aware’ or ‘the pathos of things’. Islands also reflect our own individual condition and while salvaging, reshaping and reconstructing they develop the poetic encounter. As a ‘process artist’ my works not only reveal the process of their making, but suggest that those processes have simply been paused in their unfolding. It’s a meditative process, reconsidering what we acquire over time, the metaphorical acts of searching, excavating and unearthing these material things. All is represented as reconstructed, re-purposed future relics. Morgan Veness is a Sydney based artist with an MFA from UNSW College of Art and Design.
