Friday, 14 January 2011

Bite 38: Peter Panyoczki - New Zealand Sheep in Manhattan Dreaming of Home, 2010

New Zealand Sheep in Manhattan Dreaming of Home, 2010,
 inkjet and perspex on aluminum and backlight, 150 x 150 x 65 cm

The Keeper of Sheep XXXIX

The mystery of things – where is it?
Why doesn't it come out
To show us at least that it's mystery?
What do the river and the tree know about it?
And what do I, who am no more than they, know about it?

Whenever I look at things and think about what people think of them,
I laugh like a brook cleanly plashing against a rock.
For the only hidden meaning of things
Is that they have no hidden meaning.
It's the strangest thing of all,
Stranger than all poets' dreams
And all philosophers' thoughts,
That things are really what they seem to be
And there's nothing to understand.

Yes, this is what my senses learned on their own:
Things have no meaning: they exist.
Things are the only hidden meaning of things. 

Alberto Caeiro (Fernando Pessoa)

Currently on view at the Pah Homestead, TSB Bank Wallace Arts Centre, Auckland.
  
Source:
TSB Bank Wallace Arts Centre Opening Exhibition Catalogue