Bread and Alchemy Theo Dorgan What do we think of, nowadays, when we think of alchemy? In an age of information
but unnoticed, as the air is to humans and other mammals, as the sea is to fish. Yet
All that we say of alchemy, we can say of art. A number of elements in this exhibition
invited, in other words, to join in the alchemy of mind working with mind, attention
overload, accustomed as we are to requiring quick answers to all questions, most
consider, as Abigail invites us to do, the mystery of bread, how two ‘inert’ substances,
make the identification explicit: you can observe the weirdly impressive business of
working with attention in the boundless unfolding of human curiosity, the ceaseless
people would rattle off something along the lines of “proto-science, the transmutation
milled grain and water, transmute and transform when a third element, yeast, is
yeast working through dough in a series of photographs that arrest the process, that
working of our common imagination as we strive to understand this life of ours.
of base metals into gold” and be content that they had exhausted the subject.
introduced. Consider the role of the observant mind in this process, as in who it was
offer us a literal snapshot of a complex chemical interaction at work. You can observe
first noticed that a + b in the presence of c produces d. Consider how this process
the process captured as it occurs in the flow of time. You can claim time for yourself
The Sufis say that the presence of enlightened souls acts in a given society as a kind
The commodification of knowledge, resting as it does on the cursed proposition that
has been handed down, how it has varied and modified from one society to another,
to allow the rich metaphorical hinterland of the mystery grow in your own mind and in
of yeast. Enlightenment, its humble pursuit through work, is the proper business of
time is money, demands of us that we confront questions now so as, essentially, to
one epoch to the next, how what is discovered in one place is introduced, deliberately
your own attention.
the artist and an end result of art; it is also a gift that, like bread, acquires its deepest
dismiss them with all possible speed. There is an unvoiced but everywhere dominant
or by chance, into another place. Consider the artfulness of the baker, consider how
and truest meaning when it is shared. We are invited here to become alchemists of
belief that time spent in reflection, in patient inquiry, on the acquisition of knowledge
two people using the same ingredients, even the same mixing bowls and ovens, will
And you can consider what it might mean, when you see bread here transmuted,
beyond the immediate and superficial, is somehow time wasted, and that when we
produce two different breads. Consider the great gulf fixed between breads produced
transformed in the alchemical process of casting, into precious metal. In this latter
spend time on such matters, someone, somewhere, must suffer unforgivable
by the schooled human hand and the soulless, tasteless products of the machine
case you might find yourself thinking of Midas, of how all that he touched turned
financial loss.
bakeries. Consider the presence of bread in our art, philosophy and common speech
to gold — you may even catch your mind leaping, as mine did when I heard that
as a source of metaphor, as a guide to those leaps of imagination that drive us - and
story first as a child, to thoughts of how splendidly rich you would be if everything
Information, easily acquired, supersedes knowledge, not least because the acquisition
consider, too, the role bread and grain has played in our wars and in our politics, in
you touched turned to precious metal - before being brought up short by the simple
of knowledge requires study, the investment of attention and time. And, to invoke
the self-sufficiency of isolated homes and in the growth of villages, then towns and
realisation that you would, of course, very soon starve to death.
another cliché, we have become notoriously time-poor.
cities whose first nucleus, always and everywhere, is the bakery.
ourselves, to take our share of what alchemists have always and everywhere called, simply, ‘the great work’. Dublin 2013. Theo Dorgan is a poet, novelist and prose writer. He is a member of Aosdána.
As indeed, we would very soon starve to death if it were not for our bakers and our Part of the business of art in our time is to refuse this glib dismissiveness, this
Art, chemistry, tradition and innovation, talent and learning, all these and more are
artists. When Abigail offers the individual photographs in this exhibition as a gesture
knowingness that supersedes knowledge, and Abigail’s exhibition is, in large part, an
involved in the alchemy of bread. Alchemy is a tradition with an impressive lineage,
of homage to individual women artists she is making this connection plain, and yet
attempt to challenge this headlong flight into assumptions so devoid of content that
as rooted in philosophy as it is in the practical manipulation of the material world. It
at the same time elusive, tantalising, as metaphors and truths should be. You do not
they amount to no more than lazy dismissals.
rests on a single basic assumption, that all manifestations of what we might call the
need to know the work of, say, Dorothy Cross, Louise Bourgeois, Amanda Coogan,
life force are interwoven one with another, that this world in which we find ourselves
Tacita Dean or any of these other dedicatees in order to see what is in front of you,
She has chosen to concentrate her attention, and therefore ours if we agree, on the
is a plenum in which psyche, body and mind - and soul, if you are prepared to
nor yet to grasp the connection between bread dough observed and the work of one
simplest of alchemical processes, the intriguing transmutation of grain and water
countenance the term - are mutually interdependent.
of these artists - but you may be inspired to seek their work out, and perhaps even to
into the bread that for much of our history on the planet has been humanity’s single
revisit O’Brien’s work then, to see if you can imagine for yourself what it was in each
most sustaining food. Literally, the staff of life. Breadmaking is an art that has been
individual photograph that called to her mind the work of this artist or that. You are
practiced for millennia, an art that by virtue of its very pervasiveness has become all
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