Intersection is a collaboration between visual artist Nicola Anthony & poet Marc Nair, exploring areas in Yangon, London, and Singapore.

This body of artwork explores place memory, social memory, and the layers of fragments and details which can tell us so much about unspoken history.

Intersection includes a published book and a large collection of ink on calligraphy paper paintings, incense-burned drawings, calligraphy paper sculptural forms, installations using found objects which resonate with the spaces which Marc and Nicola travelled to during their research.

AN INTRODUCTION TO INTERSECTION

Words by Nicola Anthony & Marc Nair

"Change is endemic, almost inevitable. Plotted through artefacts of imagination and memory, the traces of small things gather momentum and power until collectively, from a dust cloud of stars and full stops, comes a wave of change.

And so we find ourselves at an intersection, having gathered from neighbourhoods in London, Singapore and Yangon.

In cities such as London, the exterior of old buildings within the City Walls conceal indecipherable codes of faceless corporations. Arcane symbols are forgotten as suited masses pour along the streets. But here and there human elements break the façade and reveal facets of the past, like fragments of the wall waiting to be found.

In Kampung Gelam in Singapore and Kyauktada in Yangon, history’s seam is not so neatly sewn. Inside these gaps, older men sit by coffee shops as they have done for years, looking at scenes of wireless life but remembering another era, while holy places continue with their patient call to prayer; the work of devotion carries on, unbroken.

Much of the world is coded, unknowable. The more we look, the more we see.

We interpret it through our own experience, but it is ultimately a fractal, connecting infinite complexities together. Loci on this journey are physically embedded: enduring, shifting or lost, until emerging in the future or in memory. The eye is drawn to smaller details; imperceptible shifts, human points of connection.

The intersection of time,

history,

language,

culture,

class

are strata.

We begin to explore the chinks, leaks and erosions. Sometimes forcibly cut into or severed; sometimes organically splintering under pressure; at other times worn through by wear, love, use or misuse.

These intersections exist simultaneously, regardless of their occurrence in time. Collisions of meaning contain overlapping consistencies; whether it is the vestiges of colonial influence, the relentless march of capitalism, or the stubborn refusal of history to disappear.

If you look hard enough you can still experience the ghosts and vibrations from the past manifesting in the now. And as artists, all we can do is close our eyes and open ourselves to stimulus and stories.

The elements that stir us to art make for flickering moments; a brief flash of recognition, a hint of scent memory. A distant sound rings clearly in our ears above the rumble. A nexus of connection, recognition and discovery.

Above all, an intersection."

Hollowed in all manner of conclusions, Nicola Anthony, 2016. Incense-burned calligraphy paper over ink drawing — *Hollowed in all manner of conclusions*, Nicola Anthony, 2016. Incense-burned calligraphy paper over ink drawing

Words by Marc Nair & Nicola Anthony.

Visual artworks by Nicola Anthony

Singapore, 2017

Intersection: Artist's book of poetry and art by Marc Nair and Nicola Anthony, 2017

Intersection the exhibition took place at Intersections Gallery, Kampong Glam, Singapore, who have been the kind supporters of this ambitious and complex project. Our thanks go also to the National Arts Council for their sponsorship of the project, and NPE Art Residency where Nicola produced most of the artworks, as well as our publishers Knuckles and Notch.

Many thanks to our supporters and partners: