b'Blair Saxon-HillPersistent Mattersby Essence HardenAssemblage regards the life of objects as an infinite domain. The lost, disregarded, used, and spent stuff of the living is oriented as matters of near inherent worth. Works of assemblage figure the instability of hierarchymaterials, customs, and orientationswhile shuttling in bodies and articles of the present. That is, assemblage can ask how the moment (always this one) holds disorder and care and how the things of our time can become a vernacular of critical discourse.Assemblage is the sphere of Blair Saxon-Hill. In works ranging from photographs and prints to textiles and wood, Saxon-Hill gathers and collects from the world around her with texts including books, magazines, and script, and the cityscape as a primary site. Assemblage as a discursive modality and sect of art-making is forwarded in what Saxon-Hill names impos-sible documents, works of the affective and effective in material matters and text making. These impossible things appear in Saxon-Hills engagement with the historical momentwho/where/how as a means to reposition audience/artistand the functionality of art itself, and how and for whom work is made. That which goes unsaid, that which is assumed, and that which lives in the shadows flows from and through Saxon-Hills practice.Notably, Saxon-Hills 2015 solo exhibition at Fourteen30 Contemporary in Portland used recovereda distinction from the coincidence of foundphotographs, textiles, wire, fibers, and brushstrokes to collage textured and three-dimensional works. Refuting primary authorship, legibility, and discrete mediums, Saxon-Hill troubles, through assemblage, our (that is, this) social moment, the environmental cost of materiality, and the precariousness of our relationship to self and the environment. There is a real moment of play in percep-tion that happens when confronted/welcomed with what it is Saxon-Hill develops, as with moments of analog made digital, then made analog again, asking, What is an art image ver-sus the image of art? There is presence made of absences via an engagement with the social and larger media-scape, particularly in Saxon-Hills collages, blurring authorship, collective consciousness, and the veracity of documentation.74'