Blister lens | timmeacham

Blister lens 2019 Polythene blister, mixed media

There was no sound from the adjoining room, save the breathing of the house. Small holes had been drilled in the wall near the ceiling –light was channelled through acrylic rods allowing an exchange of light between the silent rooms. We managed to capture and seal some of her last breath in a bag. Perhaps it still held some sound, as the feeding call of a humpback whale is trapped in bubbles. All we were able to do, was to return the breath to the room where we first felt it, held, poised to speak to the walls again.

A clear polythene blister filled with air taken from the space, suspended by spring-tensioned threads leading from the 4 corners of the room, hovers, aligned with the skirting board, 20cm over the centre of the floor space. Its surface reflects its surroundings and the convex form acts as both a magnifying and distorting lens. Its stillness at the centre of the room, intensified by the tension in the springs. The piece renders the room unusable for normal domestic life, instead the space is allowed to become about itself, with its own air at the centre. The surfaces and features brought together in a dialogue of distorted reflection through the pressure of its air. Marking the centre of the space, the blister becomes the new focus of the room bringing its various aspects together; walls, widows, skirting boards, fireplace all converge to a single point of sealed air.The relationship with the skirting boards allows a connection of the edges and corners to the centre, through the touch of threads