on moments and cells....

Lyndal Osborne. The Nature of Matter. Lithographs and natural materials. 1996

At first glance, Lyndal Osborne's The Nature of Matter may appear like a retail display -- reams of fabric or perhaps wrapping paper, embellished with animal prints. The hemlines of skirts, ready to wear; off the rack.

But the lithographs Osborne has created and hung here in repetition are perhaps better compared to images of cells, the particles of life; massed in their millions, comprising all that lives and grows. None touching, all in suspension. Floating. In plasma, or in nothing at all.

Lyndal Osborne. The Nature of Matter, detail.

Osborne, herself, sees the repetition as a way of understanding or representing time or the absence of same.

"This piece," she writes, "is about repetition and timelessness. Repetition is essential to suggesting the flow of time, which is a significant component of each object's full nature. Within the unfolding continuity of sameness, I wish to see an isolated form, which can emerge from or disappear into the whole structure. My examination is at a particular point in time."

The specific within the universal. The moment within the flow of time. A rock within a river. A cell within a body.