Installations2020shown

SETE

The paper drinks, and what it drinks takes its colour away

A strip of black paper arched over a glass tank of pale green liquid on a white plinth, one end of the strip standing in the liquid

The same piece seen from the left, the far end of the black strip hanging down the outside of the tank — The other end simply hangs.

A long strip of black paper bent into an arch over a glass tank, one end standing in the liquid. The liquid is household bleach.

Close view of the arch of black paper filling the frame above the green liquid — The arch, close. The paper is still black here.

Nothing happens for a while. Then the bleach begins to climb — up through the fibres, against gravity, at its own pace — and the paper starts losing its colour from the bottom up. By the end of the show the strip has gone brown to well above the waterline, and a plume of what came out of it hangs in the tank underneath.

It is the only work in that room that is different when you come back. Everything else was finished before it was hung. This one was still being made while people walked past it, and it would have kept going after they left.