"When the past no longer illustrates the future, the spirit walks in darkness" *

It is a curious thing seeing people again for the very first time in years. Crudely speaking, it is like peering down a tunnel of time, taking a moment of history, so-to-speak, and smash-cutting with it to the present. I did it twice today and on both occasions it must be said I was energised. (Maybe I was just lucky with the people.) It gets you thinking, though. It is almost as if the excitement comes from the fact that everything that has happened - to both parties - since you last saw a person is somehow crammed into that split second when you do see them again. You register - in an instant - each developed or developing line on the face, every subliminal piece of code in the other person’s make-up, a kind of glimmer of unexplored facts in the eyes, and a tantalising hint of wisdom. Perhaps, I have since been thinking, this is what it will be like with some of the artist's work. Hers is after all work about carefully selecting and freezing a moment, aesthetically compartmentalising it, giving it a kind of immortality, and positioning it in order to transcend time with it. At some point or another with the work the present will bump into its past again. In a sense it illustrates the difference between the idea and the reality and explains art's triumph over mere thought. My comment about the tunnel of time for example may be interesting to me but it is still only a thought. The artist’s work on the other hand makes an actual statement, a time-honoured commitment, a kind of conquest, even if years later looking at it again may be like peering down that tunnel of time. *Alexis de Tocqueville