Tom Blake: index of a stream. : N.Smith Gallery

‘To index is to fix, to point out, to sort, to organize, to categorize into meaning. The index signifies, it indicates, it declares. The pointing of the index finger is a milestone in early child development, a primal communicative signal. When a child points she directs the gaze of her parent to an object of interest and she comes into a language community through this social gesture. Tom Blake’s indexing is an offering, a distillation of subtle events drawn out of the close and careful observation of his surround.’ — Sarah Robayo Sheridan, Assistant Professor, Visual Art, University of Toronto

In index of a stream, Tom Blake turns observation into a quiet form of devotion. Through de-silvered mirrors, cyanotypes, and looping video works, he translates moments of perception into a visual language of restraint and rhythm. Each work feels like an act of listening: to light, to surface, to the barely perceptible movements that shape how we experience the world.

Developed during an eight-week residency at Treasure Hill Artist Village in Taipei as part of PICA’s International Studio Residency Program, this exhibition distils the residue of place — its humidity, its stillness, its quiet persistence — into works that sit delicately between presence and erasure. The mirrors shimmer between reflection and void, the cyanotypes register time through exposure as light imprints itself directly onto paper. Both processes are grounded in observation and chance, a choreography of control and surrender.

Accompanying these works are new poems by acclaimed filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang, written in response to Blake’s video loops. The collaboration heightens the temporal qualities of his practice: repetition, return, and duration, extending them into language and sound. Together, these pieces create an atmosphere of contemplation where movement is both real and imagined.

Tom Blake might best be described as a master of negative space. In his work, what is absent becomes a site of intensity. Sometimes the negative space is illuminated by light; sometimes it is illuminated by the untouched surface of paper. These fields of stillness are not empty but charged with possibility, memory, and the quiet hum of perception. Within them, meaning gathers slowly, like dust across glass.

His compositions rely on what is withheld as much as what is shown. The unmarked areas in his cyanotypes carry the same weight as his gestures, while the voids in his mirrors reflect not the image before them but the act of looking itself. In this way, Blake’s practice becomes a meditation on attention: on the beauty of pause, the generosity of silence, and the discipline of seeing.

index of a stream reminds us that to notice is to care. Through his indexing — his subtle acts of sorting, pointing, and naming — Blake builds a lexicon of moments that might otherwise dissolve into passing time. Each work offers a place to linger, to think, to see the world not through accumulation but through the quiet grace of what remains.