Nick Cave: Meet Me at the Center of the Earth

This article on Nick Cave’s exhibition Meet Me at the Center of the Earth locates the center in Cave’s first soundsuits, made in response to the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police in 1991. Cave makes a connection between King’s flattened body on the ground and twigs that Cave found on the ground while sitting, emotionally deflated, on a park bench, twigs out of which he created protective suits that enable the artist to stand up and regain control. Overall, the power of this art expands the initial motion from prostration to gorgeous displays of newly clad bodies in standing position and moves outward into the cross-media trajectory of free-flowing, freewheeling gestures associated with the fluid mobility of dance.