Skin Coloured Earths
The landscape is a body of land, the body is a landscape, the land is the body of the landscape and so on...
On the Edge and Out of Control
It was an old hotel in the south of France, up in the Pyrenees that still felt like I was on solid earth, ears popping, mouth watering, cunt twitching, my skin drank every drop of sunshine as I slurped red wine while we held each other and rolled around in the clay, I puked and ate some more, curled up on my bed and rolled down the 100 year old shutter that suffocated the light, the air didn’t move there at night and the sun creeped in too slowly in the mornings once it could reach over the mountain tops and left early like an introvert at parties, the fresh water tasted like chalk and everyone was saying they were thirsty all of the time. Armpits were wild and hairy and cigarettes were passed around freely while we crushed pieces of bread into the shape of our palettes - not sure what was drier, the crust or our saliva, no matter how many mouthfuls I consumed I still couldn’t taste the blood in the wind, vampires in the hills and hiding, wailing at night, the house that had a dozen cats that weren’t very friendly and a church next door that chimed every 30 minutes except between 2am and 7am when clearly the vampires had to be out hunting. I watched the rain through my window and the window watched the people down on the street who were looking for the river or the butcher shop, the supermarket sold delicious pistachio gelato that we stole from a Tesco bag in the freezer and watched as the sky dissolved into constellations of satellites that glowed brighter than they do at home.
Temperatures rose to meet the glaring sun’s stare, cracking pavements and melting tar, roads into black treacle, dried rain into oily slicks, travelling at the velocity of lava. It oozes, a scrape, a cut, a wound, a menstrual cup of grass, fine fibres sprouting from freckles, a road barrier for consent, a cat claw in a cuticle. The train was so slow my vomit outran it, the tik-toks only lasted 5 seconds each and my attention span started catching up, my brain replaying song snippets like ad jingles, eroding my sense of humour to jokes that have no context in reality except for others who repeat them too, like pet parrots, I mewed my favourite one-liners and lay in bed hungry, craving a laugh in my belly from someone with dark eyes and a childlike smile, my mother requesting I stay put and my body obliging me to run when my legs had no fuel to bend to my will, the flies became sticky and the suncream sweated it’s way into my arse crack, I got crushed in the oppressive weight of my eyelids, dreams that tapered at the ends into horrors of losing teeth, but whose? I looked in the mirror as I brushed, they were still there, yellow against the froths of white foam, spit, swish, gone. The dog twisted around to lick her vulva clean, I squatted down to take a shit, to no avail, I lay back on the cot and wished I had someone who could take proper care of me.
Uneven Parallel Lines
The physical symptoms I had from a gastro intestinal bug fought their way through the heat of the August weather, I returned home and recovered under the familiar grey. Perfectly carved elbow crooks, crumpled paper and lots of skin to skin contact, the changing season feels like a sluggish bowel movement, my GP assuring me I’m getting better over the phone as I sweat more than I think I ever have, standing outside the Asian supermarket, crossing the road to the park, finding a spot, settling down and seeing others doing the same in their patches of leftover summer, a woman clad in two pieces of material called a bikini that outlines the reddening surface of her skin, living her life, I crack open a grape Fanta that tastes as purple as the violet packaging, watch a long legged person run backwards and forwards in short relays, dogs sniffing invisible things, the trees shuffling like self conscious men in clubs.
The cavernous MAC is currently filled with simulations, hyperreality of the enjoyable kind, “it looks so real” should be the title, the blue vinyl captions on the walls should be removed, the pomp and glamour of seminal white male artists should really be muted, it’s 2022 for fuck sake, fictions of family move you until you move to the next room, interpretations of a false realness that quickly slide off me like party popper confetti. I visit twice, three times maybe, watch the documentary which is more literal than the works themselves, snapshots of a practice minus a painful or sentimental narrative, much like his figures, they speak for themselves, works of art, don’t they? My current obsession is learning about the parasocial relations that folks have with pop stars, the conviction of a false love, the performance of care to assure profits, the construction of a perfect available being that you can copy and paste all your devotions on to. I wonder if Mueck loves his work, his people, if he refers to them as works or gives them names he only uses privately, if his handling and holding of their forms and bodies implies a human connection, something that appears so undeniably human, becoming his brand, his significant standout thing that makes a Mueck a Mueck. They’re imaginary visualisations, generalisations: Dead Dad, Woman Holding Sticks, Woman in Bed, objects don’t get names, the lack of a name dehumanises them, except for, perhaps, being a bunch of Muecks? I collected bits on my phone camera; the little folds, the molded toe flesh, the streaks of fake amniotic fluid and flab, flab, flab because those were the parts that seemed most impressive at a glance, not the scale nor attempted perfection of the body as a sculpture but the unwanted parts of bodies rendered in 3-D form, a fingertip pressed in a cheek, ever so gently drawing down skin, exposing the red glossy inner rim of the eyelid, the edges of a gaze a little wider, and slightly more frightening.
Softness is - “like stroking a blister”. (Sayaka Murata, Convenience Store Woman, 2018), dinner recently at a nearby Lebanese café and my friend described the fresh pitta bread as a baby’s cheek, my date touched the skin below my armpit and next to my left breast and uttered “so soft I can’t stand it”, I rub more and more moisturiser into my freshly shaved legs, popping the razor burn around my vulva, adding fine layers to the cellulite with every slick applied, every butter soaked toast swallowed, everything must be soft, for the desirable sensitivity of femininity, for the love of rituals, the need for maintenance, oilings and lubricants, my skin will resemble paper someday, crumple, crease into lines and furrows that won’t go away no matter how much I try not to laugh, smile, breath, cry, smoke, go out or sleep on my side. The promises, the freezing, the botox, petrification, glass like, a living statue, an oxymoron, crossed my mind when looking at Ben Malcolmson’s crumpling landscapes at QSS in August, folded and unfolded, under the pressure and release of human hands, the land has become a skin, it’s image distorted in the crevices, grykes, clints; in the words I learned at school to recognise the different shapes of the limestone of the Burren in Co. Clare, turning over exam papers, shaping Chinese word puzzles, origami swans, paper planes, discarded drawings, unwanted post, composted and rotten in landfills, reshaping the landscape the trees were ripped from, there were six of them, six perspectives, too close together, trapped indoors, a hallway more than a gallery, in between spaces, filled with projected planes, paintings and pictures, I scroll through my camera roll, I see the view from my residency window, I see one of the residents went back there, click like on her BeReal, a pang of jealousy, a squirm of my stomach remembering the gut illness, sunshine filled squares glaring up at me from my phone, I press the lock button, it blackens, I continue to hold it in my hand, the lithium insulated heat felt nice in the cold.
Attempting to turn my sculptures into flesh, I got confused, overthinking, could a David Lynch theme be emerging or am I just a fetishist sculptor, craving other people to find things I can’t, a treasure hunt for disgusting secrets just so I don’t have to say them aloud, grumbles, gurgles, her tampon string peeping out, she didn’t care, insults said behind backs, backs turning and twisting to eat me out on a first date, I moan when expected, my heart rate rising when I ask for something, my request followed up within two to three business days, drunk, blocked, shoving my phone into a drawer, the illusion that my vibrator has a life of it’s own, my bed, my safe space, again - I still can’t decide if I like dating strangers or not, generalisations are an act of cruelty, breaking the habit of despising something I don’t know that much about, I try to perform, I try to write, I hear myself repeating the same ideas out loud, of interiors and the grotesque, her pussy a liquid, the resin mixes and I pour, I wasn’t scared that night but still depressed the next morning, the bus journey and the air smelled wet with smoke, the drudgery of boredom, the appeal of it, my therapist says, my comfort zone - a panic, pressure, calm during a storm, that was just the diazepam, longing for shocks of thunder, or fireworks, clouds rolling by, the condensation on the glass, wiped on jeans, on my fingers, still smelling of her. Getting to sleep and getting up are the hardest, Autumn is on time this year, unlike all the other seasons, I’m dreading the future, which is a good thing, trust me.
Those mountains look beautiful and I've always been fascinated by teeth stress dreams.