First Thing Rotated
In 2010, Claude Heath accepted an invitation to join a group of archaeologists working in Alexandria in Southern Romania who were exploring alternative ways of thinking about artifacts and about the intersections of art and archaeology. While in Alexandria, Claude made a series of his “sighted” or “blind” drawings: First Thing Rotated is one of them. In his contribution to the book that resulted from that 2010 art/archaeology project, Claude discussed making First Thing:
“The first object that I was presented with was hidden in a cardboard box. It weighed heavily in the hand, a chunk of rock with a sharp edge, bound to a wooden shaft by a frayed but tight cord. I guessed that it was a flint an axe-head with a modern handle. The team of archaeologists working at the Muzeul Județean Teleorman in Alexandria, Romania were under instruction not to tell me anything about the objects that had been chosen for me to draw. In the heat of the first day, we set up a desk area that was screened off by hanging cloths, so that I could work with my arms out of sight, and not see the objects or the drawings. I preferred to work without a blindfold, with my hands inside the tented working area.
“Drawing a flint axe-head begged an obvious question: what tool do you use to draw a tool? Or could I use the instrument itself to draw? I used the flint cutting edge to incise and tear the paper, while carefully avoiding putting the object at risk of damage by using soft layers underneath the paper. By rocking the gently curving edge repeatedly across the sheet, in a slot grinding action using the handle end as a fulcrum, I left a trail of indentations and tears that reshaped the paper into strange furrows. The lacerations reveal the smallest details about the individual chipped planes that constitute the cutting edge.”
For another of Claudia’s work from Alexandria follow this link:
Details of Claude’s work in Alexandria will be found in these publications:
Heath, C. 2011. Unsighted tactile drawings of prehistoric archaeological objects. In S. Mills (ed.) Interventions: Măgura Past and Present, pp. 185-202. București: Editura Renaissance.
Heath, C. 2014. Pictorial Essay A: Out of Sight. In P. Dent (ed.) Sculpture and Touch, pp. 123–145. Farnham: Ashgate.
An overview of the project that brought Claude to Romania (Măgura Past and Present) can be found in this publication:
Mills, S. (ed.) Măgura: Past and Present. Cardiff: School of History and Archaeology, Cardiff University.
For more information about Claude and his other work, please use this link:
For other work on www.artarchaeologies.com from Măgura Past and Present see the following:
Transforming the Landscape: “37097.48776”
Măgura Past and Present was a project based at Cardiff University and directed by Doug Bailey and Steve Mills. It was one of a number of projects within the Art-Landscape-Transformations-Project 2007-4320 that was funded by the European Union Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency Culture Programme (2007-2013).
