Tender Leavings

Tender Leavings	2016	mixed media installation	multiples
		Artwork, image and photography © Perdita Phillips	the-nonhuman
In collaboration with termites

variable — up to 400 x 300 cm		edition 7/7 available	$2200 not including installation
paper fragments on black background
Project: from below	2016-on
Exhibition: Delegate Exhibition	2016	H.R. Gallop Gallery, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga
Exhibition: Radical Ecologies	2016	Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Perth
Exhibition: Make Known: The Exquisite Order of Infinite Variation	2018	UNSW Galleries, Sydney

Tender Leavings was a mixed media installation containing fragments of the remains of 850 romance novels buried for one year in a desert sand dune. The action of termites has fragmented the tales of love. Uncontrollable deconstruction is followed by reconstruction of new dialogues from the absences (Termite-Ma) created. The artwork follows a line of investigation where ‘exformation’ of a ‘material archive’ builds possible future environmental scenarios. It searches for nuggets of wonderfulness in the papery remains. More obliquely, the installation alludes the possibility of change from below, and to the possibility of cooperative recovery from disaster. The work “looks forward,” creating an anticipatory archive, that is anti-monumental and that continues to eat away at us.

For Radical Ecologies, fragments were tweeted/instagrammed daily http://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/tenderleavings/ (perditaphillips or perditaphillips)