Walking in the city, I look down at the paving stones succeeding one another. I look at the Cartesian geometry of the buildings, the balconies protruding from the walls of bricks: Each of these rectangular displays corresponds to a family living behind the facades of the buildings. They are private-stages-in-public-view exhibiting absence. Perhaps people are living their lives in other rectangular platforms. Some balconies exhibit a minimal arrangement: A table, two chairs, one or two planters with flowers. A few feet ahead, a balcony stops me from moving onward: A beast of burden, this balcony is loaded with dozens of containers and big restaurant buckets, all previously identified as garbage, now repurposed as planters. They are attached with cords and old electric cables to the ribs of the balcony without any design, plan or warranty of installation. They are filled with soil salvaged from the building’s front yard and homemade compost from food scraps. As their labels fade and unstick, a new identity shows through. The balcony garden is aware of it’s reality, and uninterested in its appearance. Through the plastic shells of the planters, I can sense the seeds swelling in the mud. This knocked-up bucket, filled with earth and seeds, feels homey like homeland. Home, more than a place, may be a way of being. Looking at that crowded balcony, I sympathise with the soul of the gardener who finds the bareness of the bricks unbearable. The balcony garden is an image of fabricated nature. The branches of the plants hang from the bars of the balcony, very close to the earth level, but they are unable to reach it. The garden is totally dependant, not on the rain or the wind, but on the gardener assuming full responsibility of his construction, becoming one with the balcony. A few days of absence, and all could dry up. The gardener is to the balcony, what the bucket is to the plants. Seeing this corner of cement turning green, despite its delicate balance, is a joyous vision; With all the fires burning the tropical rainforest and so many other forests all across the planet, even the tiniest gesture of growing one single seed is an act of resistance. As producers and consumers become distinct and disconnected, access to identifiable, organic food becomes privilege of the affluent. To grow a few radishes and beans, even in the ridiculously small scale that this balcony can allow, is a commemoration of how foods grow, and a suggestion that food is not necessarily a product of labour, but merely the result of caring for a bucket filled with earth. I imagine the planters being found at that same sidewalk, just in front of the balcony on a waste collection day. Like trees that nourish themselves from material buried in the soil just above their roots, these planters were sourced from the garbage. I call this a ‘natural gesture’.
Caring for buckets is an installation of hand printed Japanese paper and found packaging material which are wheat pasted on the wall. It measures 12 by 15 feet and it is printed with photolithography, monotype and stamping. The image is based on a balcony situated on Parc Avenue in Montreal. The majority of the plants depicted are plants I know, and I have been growing at my house and at Concordia University for several years. Some stamped elements, such as ropes and cords, are taken from material I collected from my balcony.
Konstantinos Meramveliotakis 