Unboxing 3: Dangerous Goods Manifest

 

Leicester, December 2020

There's probably a limit to how many of these workplace-derived 'Unboxing' posts I can belabour you with - at least without a bit of creative manipulation of the source imagery.  Nevertheless, I remain deeply attracted to the honest simplicity and truth-to-materials of the honest brown cardboard box, and to the emblematic symbology and potentially allusive texts which adhere to them.  These particular examples were especially 'thrilling' as (unusually), they contained a potentially hazardous chemical, and demonstrate the double-boxing, stern, graphic warnings, and 'Dangerous Goods Manifest' attendant on such a deadly cargo.  For the record, the product in question was a single bottle of Isopropanol - hardly plutonium, but at least: no couriers were harmed in the making of this blog post.

As soon as I have unpacked such consignments, the boxes generally get casually stacked in the corner of the classroom - awaiting recycling.  Even at this scale - with only two elements of modest scale, a distinctly totemic quality begins to emerge.  Indeed, I'm reminded that this is exactly how the format of 2018's 'Sentinel' sculptures originated - almost by accident.

'Sentinel' Sculptures, 'Visions of a Free-Floating Island', Surface Gallery, Nottingham,
September 2018

Perhaps there may be some tentative connection between those pieces, and the spate of mysteriously emerging monoliths, at various international locations, a couple of weeks back.  The reporting of those (beginning with what may have been some kind of oblique art-prank in remotest Utah) appears to have dwindled already.  That makes me think the whole thing was little more than an online meme that failed to really catch hold - particularly as the vaguely unworldly examples at a handful of locations, were joined by reports of a puerile, and far-too-representational, phallic example in Germany.  I suspect we'll soon file the memory of 2020's monoliths away with crop circles, and the like (if we remember them at all).  It does emphasise the enduring fascination of totemic, columnar forms, in the human imagination, nonetheless.

Meanwhile, the primordial urge to stack up cardboard boxes; well, that's something altogether more profound - clearly.