deodand
deodand : looped sound recording of my voice giving a repetitive instruction – “don’t eat it” alongside a field recording of crackling from an electricity pylon, gravel, flint, pewter, cast silver from a Neolithic flint tool, silver leaf, wax, daddy long-leg, crow's claw and hawthorn branches. Dimensions variable, 2015. The Extractor Space, Old Tidemill School, Deptford, London, 2015. Solo exhibition presented after my two-week residency at the Extractor Space, April 2015.
"Leila Galloway's installation deodand was the fruition of a two week residency at Extractor Space, the former school kitchen in Deptford’s Tidemill School Annex in London.
Deodand was an old English law, abolished in 1862 that legislated that anything that had caused a person’s death and was to be forfeited to the crown for a charitable purpose, it came from deōdandum, from Latin Deō dandum (something) to be given to God, from deus god + dare to give. deo dand
"...Time scales seemed moored into poised moments within Extractor Space, flint gravel from the seashore arranged into simple geometric squareness, branches spindling up from the stones, bare and seemingly growing. Silver permeated, glinting on the flint pieces, pooling against a wall and floor, a magical silver tree in a side room growing upwards and downwards through a windowsill. Flints cast in pewter and silver were embedded into the walls, a fragile dried daddy long legs minuscule time and dedicate beside the persisting metals, the space seemed full of threads of these tensions of incredible delicacy and incredible resilience. “
Kira O Reily April 13 2015.
