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for nothing

Roland Knowlden Jr.

MFA Fine Art - Degree Show, Goldsmiths, University of London

July 16th - July 21st, 2026

Awarded the Vice Chancellor’s Postgraduate Art Prize, 2026

at times the spirit is so close (black bag)

Slower and lighter
The thinnest fabric

Sometimes the spirit is so close
Mother’s father’s mother calls me to fold a cloth
The pace at which it catches the air
The smoke of a stranger’s exhale
Lit transparent in a street light
almost still in the rain

They are in the pace at which it dissipates

(One time I left my house to not be alone with that feeling that crept in like fog. called a friend out for smoke. While we were standing there i felt it behind me asking me to look across the street. There was a vacant lot bookended by two brick walls and lit only by the street lights. In the center of the vacant lot, the moment I turned around, floating in the air was this black plastic bag. I pointed it out to my friend but it meant nothing then. Other than the pace at which it fell.
I left my house initially because I felt a way, and so after the smoke I went for a long walk. I ended up in a park far from that vacant lot. But when I was walking down towards the end of the parks path - Where the street lights lit. I was asked to turn and look again. I looked up at the streetlight that I was now under. And at that moment the spirit fell underneath the bulb and into the light. And became a black plastic bag, which fell to my feet

(seconds stretched past infinity before it hits the ground.)

At times the spirit is so close
Moving backward at a cosmic time for this moment
To cast that particular shadow
For the sun to slip between that alleyway
For her hands to feel like a memory
for her vitiligo to taste of Oreos
or that feeling in your stomach
Turning from something sweet
to a disgust forgotten
only of oneself

(Self hatred is the kryptonite of the spirit
that pace will never find you there.)

But when it dissipates
when the air is stale
Rock bottom stale like a
bag of chips, left out until the logo fades
floating through the city at night
When the air moves at that particular pace
A pace , i mean when it’s so light

You can hear them