A Review
Dirk Benedroy
At either side there were two pillars, which directed my gaze inward towards the glove as I walked towards the patio. With the bricks mapping out a sort of grid on the surface they made up, the placement of the glove (slightly right of the centre and lying parallel to the lines of cement around the bricks) seemed to highlight it. Behind and partially surrounding the patio were small trees, bushes and plants. Empty crisp packets, coke cans and other discarded packages were scattered within and around these. The patio itself had relatively little detritus, which probably made the glove stand out more. It was lying on its back (which I correlate to the back of the hand), with the fingers wrapped halfway over the front-midway between clasping and reaching.
At the time I visited there was no one else there, apart from a cat in the street which ran away as I was walking towards the patio. It was cold and the sky was grey. It had probably rained the previous night or early that morning because the ground looked damp in places. It was very quiet, but every five or so minutes the calm would be disturbed by a train trundling past behind the wall at the back of the patio.
I could not tell if the glove was a man’s or a woman’s. It would offer warmth as well as tactility, so if worn for practical reasons, the wearer might have been someone who handles money or delicate objects out in the open, or a fisherman/woman (although there is nowhere to fish for about a mile). Of course anyone might wear it for any reason, and enquiring into its past could go only as far as making dead-ended assumptions (without forensic analysis). However, in its new context it could be viewed as it is, free from serving its purpose as a glove and no longer a component feature of an outfit. It is tempting to assume that the glove had been deliberately put there as it was placed in the middle of the patio, as if to draw attention to it.
This assumption inevitably leads to the question of why it had been put there. The glove could have been manufactured from the skin of a variety of animals including cows (or calves), deer, sheep (or lambs), goats (or kids). Whichever animal it was it will have been propagated for human use and consumption in an environment shaped by man. In its apparent final state, it is a brutal mishmash; the skin of one animal cut and stitched to fit the shape of another's paw.
Has it been laid to rest, perhaps in respect for the animal it took from to come into existence? The fact that it has not been buried and returned to the earth, but instead lies on the cold, hard manmade floor seems to suggest otherwise. Is this a reflection of man’s relationship with the world around him, as the barrier to the most fundamental rights of his fellow inhabitants? Leather gloves seem almost metaphorical for the way humans have the riches of the world in their grip. So this could be commenting on man's rape of the natural world. Or not. If it is then why has this particular patio in Fassett Square been chosen?
I doubt many people pay this small area much attention, probably only the residents of the surrounding houses and the occasional postman. So very few people are going to notice this, perhaps no one. Isn’t the artist cutting off their hypothetical nose to spite their hypothetical face? Perhaps this is the point: to highlight the futility of standing on your own against the overwhelming tide of the general consensus.
While the “yes we can” slogan of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign still rings in the ears, maybe this is saying “no I can’t”. Erich Fromm’s theory of “consensual validation” seems worth mentioning, that is that “just as a nationally advertised product claims, “Ten million Americans can’t be wrong,” so the majority decision is taken as an argument for its rightness” (Fromm, 1956: 340). In other words, vices are not made virtues by the fact that they are shared by millions of people.
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