Equal But Seperate

The culmination of my research into the creation of true, perfect repetition.

This piece deals with different ideas. First is repetition and the idea of in-ex-changeability. I threw 5 pots on the wheel and then made plaster moulds of each of them, then I cast 25 of each of these 5 so I had 125 pots in total. The process of casting is supposed to create perfect replicas but upon casting I found that each cast pot was different so they were true repeats, being in-exchangeable. With the last 50, I wanted to also reinforce the idea of difference by subtracting bits of one pot and adding it to another.

I knew I wanted the pots on the floor but the studio floor is dirty so I decided to separate the pots from their surrounding with a physical barrier, hence metal tiles. Metal because of the contrast between the clay of the pot and concrete (or whatever) of the floor. This allows the pots to exist in their own world but yet exists also in our plane.

The work therefore becomes about segregation, the idea of 'we are all separate but equal.' In the past 'coloured' people were separated from the whites, this though dissolved over time. At least it was supposed to. There is still segregation between the races. Speaking as a black man I think that most black people always have the idea that we need to be different from our white counterparts. Youth, especially. We reference our cultural background and our historical background as reasons to be separate.

Even more obvious is the situation with homosexuals. While nowadays most people have come to accept us as 'normal' we are still not equal to the heterosexuals. We all know about the fight for marriage equality (though some people call it gay marriage though this create further separation) and the fact that in far too many countries homosexuality is still illegal; that in some parts of America it is completely fine to fire someone based on their sexual orientation.

But, just like these pots, because we are all true repeats of each other, we are in-exchangeable, irreplaceable, exactly the same, we should treat each other accordingly. We should not focus on that which is different because being true repeats there are going to be differences but that is normal, these differences should be acknowledged because they make everyone unique not 'frowned upon'.

These thoughts only occurred to me as I made this work and I would like to continue looking at these ideas in further works.