Nowhere 2007

Curator: Well, isn't this a fascinating scene? I'm lost for words, like stumbling into a dream. Editor: I see a slick, almost sickly, artificiality, like mass-produced glass distorted and prettified. Curator: Indeed. This is "Nowhere" by Matthew Tickle, held here at the Tate. And "nowhere" is right, these forms feel alien, don’t they? Editor: Right. It's the surface treatment, the lurid green glaze. It evokes consumerism; these are things, commodities. Curator: And yet, there's a strangely organic quality too – like strange, mutated flora. Maybe that's the nowhere—a place after everything we know. Editor: Or, perhaps, it's about process itself: the manipulation of material, the labor and craft pushed towards...this. Curator: Maybe, yes! It's unsettling, but in a way that invites a little wonder, a little terror. Editor: I think you're right: it's more about how things are made and where they end up - in a cycle of production and waste. Food for thought. Curator: Absolutely. It's a reminder that even beauty can be built on fragility. Editor: Agreed. It asks us to question the value we place on objects, on the things that make up our lives.