Nothing is an interesting concept. Below is a piece of writing from the 'Writing' section of this blog. I wrote it while studying at the Royal College of Art in a class with an interesting man named Peter Blegvad. He asked us to make a piece of writing with the aim to describe the notion of nothing.
Nothing
If you write nothing then remove if
you write nothing then remove you
write nothing then remove write
nothing then remove nothing
then remove then
remove remove
.
The link below is to an interesting article by Robert Krulwich from Radio Lab on the topic of nothing and two interesting ways to look at it, one of which is to do with an artist that has inspired me ever since I started making work, Robert Rauschenberg.
Another interesting way to look at it is explained very nicely by Alan Watts in the following episode of Eastern Wisdom & Modern Life.
This quote from Krulwich just about sums up why I paint bins, or... Anything else for that matter -
"We are surrounded by Nothing. Everywhere we go, we have no idea what we're not seeing. We don't know what gravitational fields look like, what dark matter looks like, what quantum foam looks like, what de Kooning's drawing looked like, but what the scientists and the artists are telling us, in their very different ways, is that if we lean in, and pay very close attention, sometimes what looks like Nothing is the best place to find the most interesting ... somethings."
