DONALD LAWRENCE
RIVERSIDE PARK
Suspended high in the tree canopy, Comet MMXVIII’s self-luminous body is a combination of new and salvaged materials — high-tech LED lights streaming through a cluster of recently obsolete fluorescent light tubes that make up the “tresses” of the comet’s tail, a roll of Bubble Wrap glowing in front of the lights as the comet’s nucleus. Each of the roll’s 32,000 or so half-spherical bubbles is almost lens-like in itself, the assemblage as a whole playing into Donald Lawrence’s long-standing interest in historical understandings of optics in relation to emergent and obsolete technologies — most specifically the camera obscura.
Donald Lawrence
Comet MMXVIII, 2018
salvaged galvanized items and fluorescent light tubes, LED lights, Bubble Wrap, rope and tackle
Photos: Devon Lindsay