Whilst getting the material together for the upgrade seminar I presented last week, I was searching online for  ‘Brixton’ and ‘melting pot’, and saw an advert for this on Gumtree.

So I tracked it down and had a exchange in a Tesco car park, and now it is in my studio awaiting further experimentation. I’ve been reading more about salt and alchemical processes, and how salt represents the stable, ‘fixed’ element in alchemy.

Hillman talks about salt as ‘soul’; “the mineral substance or objective ground of personal experience”. In Hillman’s analysis, salt represents the drive to remember, and a trauma is a salt mine; it is a fixed place for reflection about the nature and value of our personal being, where memory originates and personal history begins. This connects with Jung’s psychoanalytical framework based on the four stages of alchemy: nigredo, albedo, citrinitas and rubedo. So I’m thinking about the connection between objects, memory and transformative processes, (and salt), and wondering how I might use my melting pot to translate narratives into physical material, or vice versa…