Lucy Steggals: Mr. Eagle 11

18th June – 28th July 2007

After the widely acclaimed installation in 2006, Bird Cage and I Could Take Off And Land Innumerable Times In A Day, EXHIBIT is pleased to present Mr. Eagle 11, a phenomenal installation by Lucy Steggals as the eighth Empty Space Projects. “Collections are material autobiography, written as we go along and left behind us as our monument.” (Material Identities Susan M Pearce. On Collecting). Most of us can relate to having collected something if only as a child. In some cases one can say that individuals collect in order to make sense of or control a small part of the chaos around them, others clearly create their own identity with and through their own collection of belongings. Mr. Eagle 11 fills the gulf between our imaginary world and our reality. His fictitious life exists in all of us and yet he is precisely his own person, with his own belongings, memories, structures and history, which we are given the opportunity to glimpse at here at Golden Lane Estate. Just as Meursault in Camus’s L’Etranger (the outsider) seems alienated from the world so too is Mr. Eagle 11 who leads a very unapologetic existence, seeking, searching and grasping for some sign of meaning in the world.

His chosen tool to do so has manifested itself in the form of looking, what is it that he cannot see? Or, is it us that cannot see and he who is trying to show us something? Nonetheless we can ascertain that Mr. Eagle 11’s process is quite clear, a meticulous collection of lenses (547 to be exact) which are placed, ordered, archived into groupings of shape, size and effect. He seems to be fascinated with the fallacy of the eye as if ‘the eye’, continually refuses to show us the truth and that truth (for him) can only be gained from physical experience itself from which he seems to perhaps intentionally or unknowingly have cut all ties. Thus his investment is in the less animate of objects, the lens to enhance, distort and idealize his vision of the world.

As if he was trying to see beyond the gaze itself, to recall something that has been lost long ago, perhaps memory or experience itself. We are left to interpret the oddly scientific diagrammatic drawings, log books, and photo studies of eye examinations in what seems to be his study, living space. Amongst the world of convex, concave, prisms and lenses we see the personal archive of daily living also becoming part of his obsessive collection as if that would add physically and emotionally to his quest to unveil what it is that is missing.

There is a certain theatricality, which links all of Steggals works, performances and installations and also the vital link of the collection. Formed here in the guise of Mr. Eagle 11 to question, depict and make apparent our need to identify our selves through the objects around us and make us realize how our illogical desire for order through collecting resonates on many levels dealing with themes of “desire/nostalgia, saving and loss, the urge to erect a permanent and complete system against the destructiveness of time.” (The Cultures of Collecting By John Elsner, Roger Cardinal)

 

Annabelle Dalby

Image: Ng Hoi Chi, Kerb Lee