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the velocity of drops, 2018
Details
Four sets of six framed digital photographic prints, DIMS.
The Velocity of Drops
Sphagnum Moss Grove, Mount Stuart
The Velocity of Drops
Empty Swimming Pool, Mount Stuart
The Velocity of Drops
Orchard, Mount Stuart
The Velocity of Drops
East Shore, Mount Stuart
Installation dimensions variable.
Location: Gun Room
Photography: Alan Dimmick
Video Documentary: click here (opens in new window)
Links
Artist's Newsletter article
Mount Stuart web site
Scotsman article
DESCRIPTION
The Velocity of Drops, a series of photos which feature smashed watermelons in uninhabited interior and exterior locations, has been on-going since 1993 and was the main feature of Borland’s exhibition An Hospital at Mount Stuart in 2003.
From the exhibition to The Power of Twelve, 2018; new works drawing on Mount Stuart’s history as a Naval hospital during World War One; to The Power of Twelve, The China Harvest, Wrong Right Hand, Moss Depository, Witness Boards II, Floating Groins/Fastened Groins, The Velocity of Drops.
research/process
Borland’s work from 1993 - 1997, often referenced techniques from the fields of Forensic Science and Forensic Medicine. Several works were developed in relation to the then named Black Museum; a nickname for the collection of criminal memorabilia displayed at Police Headquarters in Glasgow and readily accessible only to members of the Police Force.
Bloodstain Pattern Analysis (BPA) is the study and analysis of bloodstains at a known or suspected crime scene with the purpose of drawing conclusions about the nature, timing and other details of the crime. The first surviving modern study of BPA occurred in 1895 when Eduard Piotrowski published a paper entitled On the formation, form, direction and spreading of blood stains resulting from blunt trauma at the head. Since the late 1950s, BPA experts have claimed to be able to use biology, physics (fluid dynamics) and mathematical calculations to reconstruct with accuracy events at a crime scene, these claims have been accepted by the justice system e.g. the shape of blood droplets might be used to draw conclusions as to how far away the victim was from a gun when they were shot.
This technique of forensic science has drawn more skeptical scrutiny since 2000 as part of the work in BPA was performed rather intuitively; this was clearly evident to Borland as she discused the technique with experts in relation to her own creative research -
…”examine one aspect of play, the small leap of imagination that makes one thing a substitute for another. The places, empty of persons, are animated instead by smashed watermelons, leaking juice and pulp. The effect is partly comic, but provokes nervous laughter. The melons act as an absurd form of human mess: they are the evidence of the crime that any documentary photograph can make us look for. But while the ‘guiltiness’ that can be found in ordinary settings derives in part from the influence of fiction and china on how we attend to things, it is as a form of serious play that the photographs are perhaps best described. These works parallel those moments when, standing on a bridge, for a split second, one imagines jumping off and falling through the air and hitting the water - the sensation of falling, the impact of the water. And then one realises what one was thinking in this little exercise, this rehearsal of what would happen. It is a game we did not know we needed to play, and which cannot be planned, but which obliterates whatever we were thinking and which reminds us that on balance we would rather live.”
Ian C. Hunt, Serious Play, Frieze Magazine, 1 September 1996.