Condensed Colony

Site specific installation in the Boiler Room at the Cefn Coed Colliery Museum for the exhibition Underground. No species of wild plant produces a flower or blossem that is absolutely black: the pigments that flowers employ to colour their petals don’t produce the colour black. So far no true black flower has been developed artificially; the ones available on the market are a very deep purple. Fossil organic matter providing us with fossil fuels however is pitch black. The material Melis has used to make this new work is tar, a byproduct of crude oil and a substance that is a highly viscous liquid and moves so slow it takes between seven and thirteen years for a drop to fall (the Pitch Drop Experiment at the University of Queensland, Australia). The installation consists of over 800 individual black droplets that form intriguing clusters of new budding growths originating from the remnants of the industrial past.