Stone Appreciation II took as its subject six free-standing and, to varying degrees, well-known rocks: the Bowder Stone, the Idol Rock, the Toad Rock, the Chiding Stone, the Hitching Stone and the Big Stone at Bentham.
Dunhill and O’Brien first encountered these ‘celebrity’ rocks through old postcards found online. Some dated back to the turn of the twentieth century and had travelled from the rocks themselves to people across the world, been kept for years, and then eventually posted on again to Dunhill and O’Brien. Each small object carried a strangely intimate history of looking, visiting and remembering. The randomness of the collection began to dictate a journey: if a postcard arrived, perhaps the rock ought to be found.
Visiting the rocks led to the more questionable business of measuring them. There was something faintly presumptuous about arriving with tapes and poles and attempting to take possession of these already much-photographed landmarks through dimensions. Asked repeatedly by passers-by what they were doing, Dunhill and O’Brien discovered that the most satisfactory answer was: ‘We’re going to make a portrait of the rock, so we need to measure it.’ This seemed to please people, and gave them sufficient licence to continue.
The videos record the cumbersome choreography of these encounters: clambering over, under and around the rocks in an effort to establish even rudimentary proportions.
Back in the studio, Dunhill and O’Brien attempted their portraits in plasticine, working simultaneously on specially adapted modelling stands. Working together at the stands was awkward and reminiscent of an art-school modelling exercise. Shown alongside the videos rather than given precedence over them, the plasticine forms functioned less as resolved sculptures than as further examples of the process: another attempt to get to know, record and somehow possess an obstinately uncooperative rock.
This project at the Drill Hall in Portland was supported by funding from the Cultural Olympiad, Maritime Mix.