About the work

The bus, its orange faded to a pale whisper, should be outside. Its purpose, surely, is the open road, the suburban street, children spilling out into sunlight. Instead, it is here, grounded in the chalk lines of a new garage, under lights too harsh for its worn interior. The red balloon, incongruously cheerful, is a tether to some event that has already ended, or not yet begun. It feels like an absence in two directions: the children are gone, but also, the *idea* of the bus as a vessel for joyful chaos has been suspended. One wonders if the faint smell of jet fuel in the air is a memory it carries from distant tarmac, or a new, alien scent it is forced to absorb. It rests, but not truly, waiting for a kind of motion that its surroundings deny. This is what it means, perhaps, to be given a reprieve from one’s destiny, only to find oneself adrift in another.