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Passage
Exhibition 17 December 2022
Installation photograph from Guy Simpson's Passage exhibition in A4 Arts Foundation's Goods space shows an unpainted wood and electrical wire sculpture that recalls the mezuzah attached to the wall.
Installation view: Passage by Guy Simpson, December 17, 2022. Image courtesy of A4 Arts Foundation.
Title Passage Dates 17 December 2022 Location Goods Tagline An understated intervention in Goods considers boundaries and crossings. Credits

Artist:
Guy Simpson

Passages, an engagement with Guy Simpson in Goods, arrived unannounced. One day, a series of three small objects appeared on the walls. They referenced, if obliquely, mezuzahs – those small vessels affixed to doorways in Jewish homes that contain slips of paper inscribed with excerpts from the Torah. When passing through a doorway on which a mezuzah hangs, the observant touch the vessel and then kiss the fingers that touched it, marking and blessing their passage from one space to the next.

Together, Simpson's three wooden objects afforded reflections on the boundaries that demarcate the Goods entrance at A4; a passage through which people, artworks, assorted building materials and furniture travel. His subtle intervention brought to mind reflections from the exhibition Customs at A4 (July 2–October 8, 2022), which considered the establishment and maintenance of discrete – and more often sacred – spaces. Included in the wayfinder for Customs were a series of invitations and prompts, among them:

When walking through a doorway
touch the right post, with your right hand, at head height—
consider the room you are leaving
consider the room you are entering
consider the gap between the two.

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