Seasonal Adjustment

Seasonal Adjustment

12” x 10” (305 x 254 mm), giclée print in a signed and limited edition of 10 plus A/P

Printed on 310gsm Rag Photographique

£75

I was struggling with Ezra Pound’s comment that “Poetry is news that stays news”. How can that work? One answer may be found within the quote itself. It validates itself by being an equation, following the mechanism of Keats’s “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” that is so persuasive even as it leaves us wondering. But Pound’s is an equation of contraries, or put more simply, a paradox. And because it is paradox, exercising itself without destination as if on the endless staircase of an Escher graphic, it can stay fresh, stay news.

Nature seems to depend on paradox too. Evolution tends towards improvement, and yet the final goal of improvement, perfection, is inimical. It must be so, because evolution is triggered by the flaw, the accidental. The state of perfection has no means of adapting, and so no place in the natural scheme. The flawless organism is ousted as soon as conditions change. And nature stays news.

Seasonal Adjustment is an exercise in paradox in nature, reflecting a simple order of paradox that we take for granted, the imperative of dying to survive.