To make this work and the series of related ones, Rockburne folded and flipped a sheet of carbon paper into different configurations against the wall or floor, aligning its corners within the cross–shaped registration marks so the sheet could then be scored with a blunt tool, leaving a thick chalky line directly on the wall behind it. These works were designed to engage not only the viewer’s body, in retracing the movements of artist and carbon paper, but the gallery space as well—in their original presentation in 1973, some of the works were drawn directly on the gallery floor, which had been painted white. Since motion always implies duration, Rockburne considered the carbon paper works to be “questioning time.” The series culminated with the work Neighbourhood, in which she substituted a trasparent sheet of vellum for the opaque carbon paper.
Gallery label from Dorothea Rockburne: Drawing Which Makes Itself, September 21, 2013–January 20, 2014.
