EPHEMERAL

Artist Phoenix talks about his latest work 'EPHEMERAL' found in a car park on Little Lonsdale Street opposite Thousand Pound Bend Bar.

I installed my piece 'EPHEMERAL' on the wall of the car park in Little Lonsdale St opposite Thousand Pound Bend to coincide with the opening of the Sweet Streets Festival.


It is a public/street art piece which explores and manifests the process of ephemerality of art on the wall of the street - an ephemerality dependent on both natural and human elements.


I installed it the day before the Festival opening so that its inbuilt process of obselence would literally coincide with the period the festival is on - and hopefully do what it has been designed to do by Festival's end.


The lower set of EPHEMERAL letters are mounted onto open double-corrugated cardboard, and are therefore vulnerable to the elements; the upper set of letters are mounted onto solid plywood and coated with PVA and thus designed to last.
The incredible wet and stormy weather - with worse to come tomorrow apparently - has had an upside for me as I know it will be accelerating the process of degradation of my "MORE EPHEMERAL" letters.


When I checked the piece on Thursday night, there were already signs of the letters beginning to swell and fall apart:

The last few days have seen further rain - with even worse forecast - so I am hoping that by mid next week, the cardboard letters will have begun to strip away. And, that is not to mention the possible element of human interventions - as the piece is within reach of someone standing on a milkcrate. With any luck, the 'MORE EPHEMERAL' letters will be significantly degraded by Sweet Streets close. Now that would be Sweet!

This is a piece designed to evolve across time; the cool thing about it is it doesn't matter what happens to it - whatever happens is integral to its intention.

Also check out Phoenix's flickr Street Art Photo-stream here.