Tony Twigg

26 April - 31 May      The Absent 5th

This work considers the proposition of playing a work of art as one might play a musical instrument.

In this case the work of art is The absent 5th, by Tony Twigg. A collection of 14 puppet-like wooden forms, similar but not identical, which found a resolution in the form that is exhibited here. 

The proposition of playing this collection of forms called for then to be shuffled, evoking the process of a card game. They became a hand from where elements could be drawn and played. 

Each arrangement adopted by this puppet-like musical instrument that sounds like a hand of cards was recorded in a photograph. A sequence repeated many times that progressed from the given form, through a shuffling that was played out to a remaining single element or nothing. 

Like a single blazing note on a saxophone or a collection of rhythms on a kalimba these hands could be assembled visually into compositions and rendered as a score. For example-

The necessary photographs, 25 in all were printed out and the composition assembled, but would the result be a work of art or would it be a rendition of a work of art? Like the voice of the violin, is this the voice of The absent 5th?

Tony Twigg