A Subsumed Brilliance

Performance of polishing brass in laneways, Melbourne, Australia.

The work involved the repeated act of polishing brass elements embedded in laneways as an action centred on labour and the temporality of material attention. Each polishing produced a brief glimmer: a momentary transformation that would inevitably fade, reclaimed by environmental conditions and time. Through this gesture, the work traced the limits of permanence and the conditions under which visibility arises and fades.

From a material perspective, the brass plays a dual role. As a surface, it is both resistant to corrosion and inherently reactive that responds to the polishing act and the environmental forces that dull its luster. Resistance and responsiveness mirrors the broader urban systems in which the work is situated, systems that both absorb and resist human intervention, functioning through cycles of use, decay, and renewal.