Limbs at Ground Level, with Bare Earth

Exhibition. 7 works on view at ///cable.slot.pints, 5100 PINE ST, Garden Court. The wall is circular: walking in either direction returns to the title wall. Use Tab to move between works and Enter to read a work’s wall label. Arrow keys move along the wall.

Seven works at a single point in the city, the first acquired in July 2025 and the most recent in January 2026; three of them have since been accessioned into the permanent collection. One commissioner: Parks & Recreation. The museum did not solicit any of them.

The works are exhibited in order of acquisition. Visitors will notice that the subject does not change; the museum invites them to consider what does.

1. Limbs at Ground Level, with Bare Earth, No. 14 — Mature tree, fallen limbs, desiccated foliage, worn turf. Accession 17956879. Acquired July 29, 2025. 415 days on view. The work divides cleanly at the horizontal of the railing: above it a living canopy in full leaf, below it a mass of broken limbs whose foliage has gone brown and papery where it meets the ground. One fallen branch still hangs from the crown at a shallow diagonal, connected but no longer supported, while others have come down fully and spread outward across compacted soil that carries no grass. The museum notes the contrast of textures within a single organism as the composition's governing feature, and preserves the work as the fourteenth study in a sequence recording the same trunk's continued shedding.
2. Limbs at Ground Level, with Bare Earth, No. 15 — Hardwood limb, severed fibre, dappled light. Accession 17978559. Acquired August 8, 2025. 405 days on view. The limb crosses the walk on a long diagonal, its broken end raised slightly above the turf and showing a pale orange face where the fibre tore rather than cut. Foliage at the far end remains attached and has begun to curl, and the surrounding path carries a scatter of small twigs and leaf fragments thrown clear on descent. Read against its siblings, this work is the most complete: earlier pieces in the series present limbs already stripped to grey wood, while here the crown is still green and the fracture still bright. The museum preserves it as the series' record of a separation observed close to its making.
3. Limbs at Ground Level, with Bare Earth, No. 16 — Fallen limb, desiccated foliage, concrete walkway, granite curb. Accession 17989284. Acquired August 14, 2025. 399 days on view. The limb enters from the left and comes to rest with its thicker end squarely on the concrete, the walkway's straight line interrupted at precisely the point where it begins to narrow. Its foliage has dried to rust and ochre, a colour it now shares with the leaf litter banked against the curb in the foreground, so that the work reads continuously with the surface it has fallen onto. Where earlier works in the series present limbs already settled into the soil, this one has not yet left the pavement, and the museum preserves it for that intermediate posture.
4. Limbs at Ground Level, with Bare Earth, No. 18 — Steel standard, acrylic backboard, timber fragments, concrete pad. Accession 18420290. Acquired October 13, 2025. 339 days on view. The standard has come down as a single unit, backboard flat to the concrete and post raised at a shallow diagonal, so that the rim and its shredded net are the highest points in the composition. Splintered timber and loose aggregate remain pinned beneath the frame, recording the moment the base separated from the surface it was set into. Read alongside its siblings, the work extends the series' governing motif downward from the treeline: what was vertical here is horizontal, and the ground beneath it has been stripped to bare material. The museum preserves it as the series' most structurally complete descent.
5. Limbs at Ground Level, with Bare Earth, No. 19 — Leaf litter, exposed soil, sodium illumination, park furniture. Accession 19355994. Acquired January 11, 2026. 249 days on view. The lamp at center burns a saturated yellow that does not reach the ground it stands over, so the leaf-covered foreground reads as texture rather than surface. Bare limbs cross the upper register in every direction, and the ground beneath them holds no turf at all — only packed soil and the accumulated litter that has replaced it. Read against its siblings in the series, this work is the most fully nocturnal, the darkness clarifying how completely the canopy above and the bare earth below have come to describe each other. The museum preserves it as the series' evening view.
6. Limbs at Ground Level, with Bare Earth, No. 20 — Fallen limb, compacted soil, leaf litter, nocturnal illumination. Accession 19355995. Acquired January 11, 2026. 249 days on view. A long limb lies at rest on the ground behind the split-rail fence, its line running roughly parallel to the rail that no longer separates it from the path. The soil around it carries no turf, only dry leaves and exposed root flares, and the amber lamp overhead casts just enough light to register the ground as a continuous bare plane rather than a lawn. Read against its siblings in the series, this work is distinguished by its nocturnal exposure, in which the limb reads as a shadow within a shadow. The museum preserves it for the clarity with which artificial light describes uncovered earth.
7. Limbs at Ground Level, with Bare Earth, No. 21 — Timber, painted steel, leaf litter, nocturnal illumination. Accession 19356002. Acquired January 11, 2026. 249 days on view. The lamp above the path burns a saturated yellow that reaches only a short distance into the surrounding ground, leaving the bench and its painted slats at the edge of the light, canted toward soil worn free of grass. Read against the other works gathered here, this one is distinguished by its hour: the leaf litter reads as a continuous brown field rather than as separate fallen pieces, and the trunk in the foreground is legible only as bark texture. The museum preserves the piece for the way a single functioning lamp establishes the scale of everything around it that rests below the beam.

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