Identity

The brim of my upturned hat describes an arc at the far end of the table, roughly similar to the arc described by the most distant upper lip of the wooden fruit bowl. The closer porcelain bowl appears as a proximate relation. It too is circular, but – brightly yellow with blue lines – it appears much less gloomy and withdrawn. It also has no patience for fruit. It is full of loose items that would otherwise become lost. Apart from a few coins and my coffee cup, the remaining geometry is rectangular – books, pads, letters and so on. But none of this suggests conformity. Piles of books and paper are arranged as splayed sets of playing cards or as curious pieces of modern architecture with large, heavy concrete projections. One of the jutting roofs curves upwards at a corner to rest on the slightly higher edge of the porcelain bowl. It suggests a level of tentative communication between unlike shapes – a point of passage between one form of abstract identity and another.