Performance of polishing brass in laneways, Melbourne, Australia. Undocumented.
a subsumed brilliance
A subsumed brilliance is performative artwork first staged across 2008-10 across Melbourne’s laneways. The work involved the act of polishing brass elements in laneways as a meditation on the nature of labour, materiality, and the temporality of aesthetic intervention. Defined by the inevitable fading of the shine, in a cycle where labour is undone, the work highlights the temporality of gesture within larger urban systems and cycles.
The performance drew from an interest in the parameters of permanence and transience. The act of polishing (rendering brass elements as brilliantly reflective) is a momentary rupture in the material’s otherwise weathered and unremarkable presence within the context of the laneways. This transformation, however, is inherently fleeting; the polished surface, reclaimed by the environment, dulls and fades, subsumed once more into the muted textures of the urban landscape.
Bourriaud’s concept of relational aesthetics is central to the relationality of the shine, which generates a dialogue between the gesture, the object, and the environment, by implicating passersby who may notice the fleeting brilliance of the polished brass. This shared moment of observation, whether conscious or incidental, transforms an overlooked material element of the city into a locus of attention and exchange. However, the inevitable fading of the polish points to the ultimate transient nature of these interactions, emphasising the impossibility of sustained interruption in the flow of urban life.
The work critiques systems of labor and maintenance, drawing a parallel with the care inherent in tasks traditionally dismissed as menial. The act of polishing, repeated over years and often unnoticed or undervalued, is here elevated to an gesture. The polished brass becomes a metaphor for the cyclical nature of labour: the constant effort to maintain, restore, and intervene in systems that inexorably return to states of entropy.
From a material perspective, the brass itself plays a dual role. As a surface, it is both resistant to corrosion and inherently reactive, responding visibly to the polishing act and the environmental forces that dull its luster. Resistance and responsiveness mirrors the broader urban systems in which the work is situated, systems that both absorb and resist human intervention, functioning through cycles of use, decay, and renewal.
In A subsumed brilliance, engagement with the laneways positions the act of polishing as a performance of attention and care that ends in futility. The shine, both brilliant and fleeting, operates as a reminder of the transient nature of human impact on material systems and the impossibility of fully separating intervention from dissolution. By embracing the inevitability of subsumption, the work gestures toward a broader understanding of artistic practice as a negotiation with, rather than a triumph over, the temporal and material conditions of the world.