This is a photo of some road works near The Royal Standard.

This is a photo of some dirt in a box in the gallery space I'm using as a studio. It is left over from the last show they had here (an exhibition inspired by Robert Smithson - hence the dirt). I've positioned myself right in the corner of the space; jammed up against a window, back to the door like some Feng Shui nightmare.

The rest of the gallery is empty apart from the box of dirt. I'm in opposition to it. It feels notionally more real than me. Like a memento mori; dirt, burial, graves, etc. But maybe it's not a metaphor for death, maybe its just a metaphor for itself - like all objects, they just are what they are. We attach the meaning, the signifying arrows. In that sense all objects are metaphors for death, because when you die you become an object - you become meaningless to yourself, incomprehensible.

An obsession with truth is an obsession with objectivity - how do we see things as they are, not as we think they are? The thinking is inextricably bound up with the seeing - the perceiving. Objects inhabit truth, human subjects fail to perceive it. Once you die, you become an object, and you inhabit truth. You fulfil the dreams of scientific enquiry and cross the border from subjectivity in to objectivity.

I always think that ideas of God are bound up with philosophical ideas of truth. The very impossibility of knowledge is a direct reference to our belief in knowledge; our belief in the existence of objects, in the stability of physical laws, etc.
  For those who believe in God, the very incomprehensibility of an infinite, omnipotent being predicates his existence. One of Descartes' proofs of God's existence hinges on the definition of God as something that necessarily exists. The whole rationale of scientific enquiry is predicated on our definition of truth as something that exists, outside of our definition of it.

What I'm basically saying, is that I might keep the box of dirt.