Collisions: Julie Clarke + Mark McDean (29.03.2012)

Vault:  (aerial view of box with contents) Julie Clarke 2012 (Dimensions 7 X 11 cm)

The white, rectangular box contains 365 brown/black, almost uniform seeds I meticulously collected from the parchment-like pods of the ornamental Goldenrain Tree (Koelreuteria paniculata) growing in my front garden. There were 5 seeds in each pod. I segregated the seeds into 52 small plastic bags (7 seeds in each, 8 in one), which I joined with golden safety pins. I've inverted half of the bags in the box seeds down, half with the pins up. I glued a few opened seed pods onto the lid, painted them with gel medium and fake gold leaf fragments and then sewed black plastic mesh onto the lid with black upholstery cotton.

Working from Mark's notion that materials can solicit an emotional response, I considered each stitch of crochet in his latest artwork as a single cell and this resonated  in a news item I heard on television the day that I was thinking through my response, that scientists had developed a synthetic cell completely controlled by man-made genetic instructions. In this era in which scientists can modify the genetic make-up of a living organism, I began to think about the uniqueness of organic life around me, the potential contained within a seed and our need to protect their unique and diverse genetic information and utility. The Goldenrain tree is a native of Asia and has been found to remove heavy metals from contaminated soil. In China it's golden flowers are used for yellow dye and traditional medicines. In its native environs of Japan, Korea and China it is often planted on holy sites or over the graves of prominent people. This artwork then, is a time capsule, seed bank and container of genetic memory, which combines the organic and synthetic in what may be considered an uneasy union.