As you step across the threshold you are greeted by your self.
Stepping across the threshold initiates a transformative act. Because through the numinous language of art we may come to better know ourselves and each other. By traversing this exhibition we are encouraged to participate in self-reflexive ritual, realigning and healing those inner frailties we may carry with us, as well as nourishing our collective hopes and desires.
Within this exhibition exists a very conscious and constructed atmosphere pertaining to liminality—an ambiguous space neither here nor there, yet betwixt and between. Within this space everything is in flux and we are malleable to change—a place ripe for transformation. Here, hierarchies of all sorts may be reversed or dissolved, establishing new institutions of thought and enabling modes to perform utopian acts. Within liminality a novel configuration of ideas and relations may arise. It is a place of pure possibility, and places dedicated to culture should be fertile grounds for change and renewal. To evoke and curate the fluid nature of metamorphosis within the exhibition space is to encourage the processes of becoming better versions of ourselves.
When we are liminal we are considered between two statuses—a midpoint between a starting point and an end point. This is often experienced at crossroads, or at twilight, during our teenage years, or at other moments when we are neither this nor that, here nor there. It is not to say liminal beings are invisible, yet possess the capacity for non-structure or anti-structure. This unique and precarious position is informed by our personal stories, our social standings, and our collective histories, yet it is also an in-between status where we must be open to evolved ways of seeing and knowing. By traversing BEYOND THE VEIL we perform a rite of passage that guides us towards this future prospect. Following much reflection a rational, emotional, spiritual or physical experience may reveal, from the margins of our mind, a new destination.
Art, therefore, may be at the service of the psyche, to enact a therapeutic role. Each of the artists presented within this exhibition look beyond the veil of what is seen and known – to uncover, to pierce, to puncture the boundaries between two worlds, so that an internal/external flow of information seeps and nourishes the space, and so that all our blindsides may be revealed. They encourage us to look beyond the established binaries through which we may construct identity and interpret experience; they undulate the middle ground with a forest of symbols; they pave passages between constructed landscapes; they are the gardeners of liminal lands.
Located in the centre of this notebook, Jessica Alice articulates the blank page as a liminal field. Here her poem cascades across the bulky paperback demonstrating that all is filled, like a continuous running stream. However, like the stream, we never step foot in the same place. Between what is filled and what remains enacts symbiosis, where space isn’t seen as empty, yet more an interval between two structural parts, a progressively spatial experience. Her text is a response to the thematics of the exhibition, informed by the visual history of concrete poetry and poem lists. The particular syntax and spacing undulates and collides, making room for personal rumination and interrelation with the presented artworks.
This publication served as a notebook – a tabula rasa, an unscribed tablet. As visitors traversed the exhibition they were encouraged to ruminate upon the empty spaces provided, to collect and record their thoughts and experiences. Their words, drawings and mark-makings complete the composition of this essay.
Jake Treacy is a curator, writer and poet whose practice employs numinous acts through exhibition-making, performativity, and the spoken and written word.