Julio Claudia Richard (2016, SOMA, Mexico City, Mexico) wood, marble dust, builders chalk, and various rock types. 1.5m (width) x 3m (length) x 1.2m (height)
The gridded table/sandpit/rock-garden featured in Julio Claudia Richard provided a platform for three scientists to impart their knowledge onto the ruins of a modern city. Authorities from various scientific disciplines embellished the found stone objects with imaginative speculation allowing for both factual and conjectural understandings of form. The stone objects travel through our thoughts moving from discarded rubble to historic artefacts and back again without proof. The head of the Museum of Geology – Julio Caballero Corona, an Anthropologist Museum of Anthropology – Claudia Valeria Pérez and a Landscape Ecologist from the University of Queensland – Richard Thackway (my father) rearranged the rock’s formation to explain each of their diverging views concerning the stones on display. Mexico City is made up of many different rock types that are native to the surrounding area. Collected and arranged by Giles Thackway, these rocks were placed into the table in relation to the city’s grid where he found them.