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Virginia Verran, Bonner-space (words), 2011. Copyright Virginia Verran.

Virginia Verran

By Andrew Mania

Dear Virginia

 

 I am on the train thinking about your work and fumbling for words on my iphone as I peer out of the window at the landscape whizzing past and can’t help thinking that time is running out. 

Anxious to write something tangible my procrastination led me to two stories in the news today that make me think of your concerns.

 

 A 5 tonne NASA satellite has fallen out of it's orbit and is hurtling towards earth and is expected to land somewhere this week, where exactly it is going to land is not known yet... the bunker that is your studio might well be a safe haven. Meanwhile less alarmingly from The International Space Station, a Soyuz space capsule with two astronauts has safely landed in Kazakhstan. The video on the news showed it gracefully land surrounded by helicopters with its ring patterned parachute floating to earth. It was somehow visually reminiscent of a drawing of yours that I remember. Tangentially these events also made me think of that lucky boy in Essen Germany who 2 years ago was struck by a meteorite whilst out walking. I wonder if he has any supernatural powers now. Returning to your drawings I have been writing words that come to mind as I trundle through the countryside, which may or may not be of relevance… 

Virginia Verran, Bolus-space (blink), 2009. Copyright Virginia Verran.

celestial cartography vs astrological map pins… momentum and velocity, chain reaction… radial puncture, 

Doodlebug whirring… discus, archers, javelins and shields… cross-wires and instruments of precision… catapulted nets, veils of mathematical pins and needles… tungsten filament, fizz… kite menace… topsy turvy hovering croquet hoops…   

 

Zeppelin buzz… shuttlecock ascending… nerve gas… HG Wells's War of the Worlds… reconnaissance, propellors, artillery… stretching-contracting… aerodrome, testing ground, whiplash forces, fighter jet maneoevres, defensive spiral, rolling scissors, pursuit curves,  projectile-recoil, munitions, uncertainty principle... 

Virginia Verran, Bolus-space (summit), 2009. Copyright Virginia Verran.

searchlights, firing ranges, permissive pathway, camera obscura, chivalric flags and jousting instructions, aeronautical display, jockey shirts, radar, colliding particles, physics, elusive fusions, quantum clocks, flags flutter, gyroscopes, prism radiants… collapsing perspective, telegraph wires, telegrams dot dot dot, morse code, seismic reverberations, geodesics, floating orbits, musical kinetics, Einsteins fluff, Higgs Boson particle, acupuncture, multidimensional, big bang synesthesia…  pricks, punctures, projectiles, darts, flux and strata…  micro-macro, roving and tethered balloons… gyrating satellites , tectonic battlefield, probing searchlight… telekinesis, billowing tarpaulins, cranking orrieries and meridians… torpedo jettison, scree and craters… exponential dot dot dot…"

Andrew Mania's practice spans painting, video and sculpture;  a collector of curiosities, creating assemblages and installations that include figurative drawings, curios, sculptural objects, photographs, videos and film footage, he is represented by Vilma Gold, London.

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