Plosive blows

During her residency at Hotel Maria Kapel, Lauren Gault researched the idea of objects and materials as carriers of (non-physical) knowledge or experience. For this purpose the artist looked into the history of the city of Hoorn and its whale hunting past. During the seventeenth century whaling was a rather large industry in Hoorn; drawing many riches from the northern seas to the small harbour town. One of the most valuable resources coming from the hunt on whales was a substance called 'spermaceti'; a kind of wax that is found in the head cavity of the sperm whale. This high quality wax had an enormous range of uses: from candles and cosmetics, to fertilizer and oil for train engines. Even NASA found use for the whale oil, and the famous Hubble Space Telescope. This strange idea of the whale, this large unknowable thing from the sea, being 'everywhere', is uncanny, and the question arises if it is somehow possible to feel its presence through the objects it inhabits. Can this one material connect us to the past, the past to the present, and outer space to the deepest regions of the sea? Exhibition: Hotel Maria Kapel, Hoorn, The Netherlands (28.03.-18.04.2015).