Rachel Busby

Looking for Giorgio, 2019

A student is learning to say “ I don't make mistakes” in Portuguese. A paradox in itself. As the student continues to make mistakes, the tutor patiently continues to correct. The student keeps making mistakes. The curious contradiction of being encouraged to embrace and learn from mistakes when we have a fear of making them.

I found a video online of a boy preparing a vase of flowers. The video was found by mistake whilst researching for Giorgio Morandi. A simple spelling mistake. I had googled Modrani instead.

I was researching Morandi's late still life paintings for a painting workshop “White on White.”

I was struck by how the boy was elevating the status of the vase into a symbolic gesture, in not such a dissimilar context to how Modrandi revered the every day object in his paintings. I kept the video as a reference of my happy accident, as this time I had taken notice. An innocent stumble upon, a reminder that I do such mistakes on a very regular basis. I since re-filmed and re-edited the film re-contextualising the work into my own. Transforming the work into a psychoanalytical dreamlike perspective of making repetitive mistakes.