Touchstone (Lot's Wife)
Saskia Doherty
16 May → 14 June 2014

Saskia Doherty, Touchstone (Lot's Wife), 2014, paper clay, artist book, installation shot, photo credit: Christo Crocker

Snap-frozen and petrified in salt as she turned back to witness the ignition of Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot’s Wife’s enduring form is said to be held in a rock near the Dead Sea of Israel: touchstone of a myth, held in stasis as a visual deterrent against vision. The name was also commonly ascribed to pillars for the purposes of orientation in early cave exploration. In this way, Lot's Wife becomes the inverse of her biblical form, borne as the patron-saint of free exploration as she guides the explorer in their quest for new visions.

Taking as its beginning a moment [real or embellished] in which an act of witnessing is reprimanded by the transformation of a subject into a static record, Touchstone (Lot's Wife) attempts to crack open this space of memorialization. It aims to create an environment in which a certain conception of constricted viewing might be released back into the natural flows of memory.

Saskia Doherty is an artist and writer whose work takes form primarily as sculpture, drawing, text, and sound. Saskia has participated in exhibitions at organisations including Monash University Museum of Art, Tophane-i Amire Arts and Culture Centre, Istanbul; the National Gallery of Victoria; the National Art School; TarraWarra Museum of Modern Art and West Space.