2022
Collaboration with Lucy Meyle
13 January – 5th February 2022
Curving over hard and hidden-into, the whorled structure of a snail's shell suggests an infinite deepening of time as it turns inwards again and again in a vertigo spiral. In our writing and research about the snail, we came to think about how texts and images can become tied to one another across time, and how these ties create slippery trails between ideas. This installation proposes to meet the snail in a field of open query, where ideas and thoughts connect indirectly via shimmering trails of meaning that spiral in and out of the installation.
Snail Time II was installed at RM Gallery in January and February 2022. Over the four weeks of the install, the work shifted and changed as new elements were brought in and removed, and as mushrooms, sweetpeas, and texts accumulated on the ramp. At the end of the exhibition, we released Snail Time ii, the second publication for the project.
Week One:
Week Two:
Week Three:
Week Four:
Over the four-week duration of SNAIL TIME II a series of images, objects, and texts have amassed in the gallery. This loose collection of research, images, and writings has been comb-bound together into this publication. The accretion of material mimics the incremental calcification of a snail’s shell, where growth causes the spiral to deepen as it expands (the central point of the whorl marks the beginning of the snail’s life). We made during SNAIL TIME II as much as the time and space allowed, layering objects and documents over the top of one another while the exhibition was open. Of course, calcification can suggest the hardening of snail shells as well as human viewpoints over time. However, repeatedly tracing the snail’s peripatetic movements in and out of historical text, etymology, and artwork has served both to strengthen our affection towards them and to keep us in an enjoyable state of unknowing.
This is the second iteration of SNAIL TIME, which was first installed at Window Gallery from March to May 2021. The ramp-like structure in SNAIL TIME II was originally installed in a previous exhibition at Blue Oyster in Otepoti Dunedin, entitled Looking Forwards and Backwards (2017). Bringing these two sites of practice and research together for RM, the undulating structure of the ramp became a site of action and accumulation: a place to consider the snail across different tempos.
The word vivarium is Latin for ‘place of life’, and usually signifies an enclosed area for the observation and research of animals. Types of vivarium vary greatly, but most attempt some sort of simulation of a natural environment. The fresco of the vivarium painted in the Chambre du Cerf (Stag Room) in the Palais des Papes in Avignon depicts a large rectangular pool situated in a forest clearing, around which there are four people. Fish and ducks appear in the pool, and three of the people hold nets while one sits with their feet dangling in the water. The other frescos in this room show hunting and foraging within a wooded scene, a theme of human domination over the natural world. Chancing upon this image, we were struck by its similarity to the ramp. Perhaps the ramp structure is a kind of vivarium for observing and studying traces, a simulated research environment in the making, or an arena of wayward thoughts and accidental discourses.
The undulations of the ramp form an uneasy ground for walking. A complete circumnavigation of the ramp could take you down, then up, then up, then down, or going the other direction up, then down, then up. At the edges, piles of ephemera are placed for the taking, and along the back wall an arena for snail racing slips off the edge into the central space. Projections travel around the walls bisecting the ramp in places and falling through the floor. At the highest vantage point, the room you are in takes on a strange proportion. The ramp reconnects with itself to form a 4x6 metre walkway.
As the four weeks passed, things in the space changed. Objects and texts were added. Sweet peas dried out, and a caterpillar started to eat their leaves. Mushrooms grew. At the end of each week, we documented the installation, creating a series of snapshots of the developing ecology in time. The elements of SNAIL TIME II have different material futures. Some materials will be repurposed or reused. Some objects will be archived and stored. The comb binding of this publication allows for the spine to be opened up and for potential new texts to arrive. The mushrooms will be eaten and sweet peas planted. As the installation disperses and rejoins the flow, perhaps this collection of companion thoughts and wanderings will travel too.
— Text from the Introduction to Snail Time II, catalouge and ephemera distributed on the ramp at RM Gallery. Part of the work "Snail Time II" at RM Gallery, 2022.
The Slow Knowledge of a Gardener, exhibition text by Sophie Davis, 2022 (PDF 494kb)
Snail Time II Crossword made by Lucy and Ziggy. Answers on back page - NO CHEATING! (PDF 1MB)
See also Snail Time, 2021. The first iteration of this project.
© Copyright Ziggy Lever
