Alex Gawronsk i
Ghost Phones I and II
Bakelite, resin, electronic components (phone I)
Railway Sheds, Honeymoon Suite House

What makes a 'ghost town'? Ultimately it is an absence, abandonment. What has disappeared is the presence of communication. The town becomes a relic of the imagined leaving it open to interpretation and the communication of possibilities. What is left and what remains of human presence is poignantly exemplified by the technological traces of lost communications, long forgotten conversations. Symbolic of a technological past, the silenced telephone, signifies an almost sinister absence. We wait for it to ring. We are held captivated by its refusal, held in suspension hoping to be connected to the 'outside world'. Instead these phones sit stubbornly mute, as icons, ringing or not. Their ring is the promise we activate. The phones' denial of dialogue emphasizes their existence as objects and symbols. Their instrumental function has been over turned as has our dependence on expedient every day communications.