Artwork: Chris Bond, Michelle's hand rolled blu tack blob from her work desk (replica), 2007, Melbourne (Destroyed)

Sometimes it’s the most personal artworks that resonate deeply with the audience. In the case of Australian artist Chris Bond’s artwork Michelle’s hand rolled blu tack blob from her work desk (replica) (2007) it’s a small gesture, an imprint in a sense of someone who had a habit of rolling Blu Tack into cylindrical shapes—the imprint of a hand, the warmth of skin, a repetitive perhaps anxious manipulation of a tactile material, that then gets left on a desk or discarded for no longer being useful.

Bond’s work is one of re-creation and transformation. It’s a work redolent of loss and grief and love. Such a simple material, shaped by Bond’s hands to mimic what his wife used to do, perhaps even mindlessly, habitually, before she passed away. And in the making, Bond connects not just physically but in memory, with someone no longer here, but always present because of his love and through his grief, which time and the movement of life would alter.

Here’s the poem/art story I wrote based on Bond’s artwork:

he held on

to her

touch

only to let go

every

day