Is this enough for a likeness? is a drawing on the BACKSPACE wall of the nearby access covers that are set in the bitumen outside the chapel building and outlined in yellow to prevent tripping. The drawing uses wool and tacks to collect their life-sized shapes on the BACKSPACE wall to see if that is sufficient to make a likeness (even though anyone can see that the actual covers have more to them—they are made of sturdier material, they are on the ground not on a wall, we believe they cover actual holes in the ground, and they have a different arrangement across the ground than the shapes do on the wall, and so on.)
This drawing is paired with another work in the Library’s upstairs FRONTSPACE that means that when someone sits in one of the lounge chairs there, they have the opportunity to see that the two shaped lawns in front of them are more or less repeated in the two side tables covered in ‘grass’ beside them. Again, anyone can see this ‘repetition’ is a stretch – the actual lawns are much bigger, they have a different shape to the side tables and so on. It is only the repetition of their location and of their own doubled grassiness that is used to make their likeness in FRONTSPACE—is that enough?
Both works are linked by their experimentations with likenesses, and also by each having a little of itself in the other—a yellow hula hoop from John Stanfield’s store (that happens to be the same size as the circular access cover) is located against the FRONTSPACE window (though it gets moved around sometimes), and a ‘grass’ circle (made of the same ‘grass’ material as the top of the circular side tables) is on the BACKSPACE wall to resemble the nearby circular access cover.
margaretroberts.org/archive.html
Is this enough for a likeness? is open NAS campus & library hours until March 2026
