On this page are a series of works that have traces of the body, but do not feature the body itself. You will see paths made; sites of birth, death and confinement; rooms where there is absence and liminal outside spaces.
Untitled (Milltown); Home to the toilet; History Lessons
Untitled (Room); Exercises in Futility (detail); Eccles Street
Time was, three out of five books were produced in the Soviet Union. Imagine this: a bar room, dissolving people into elements of themselves as the evening wears on. Imagine, what is it that is meant to happen here? Conversations, joy, shouting, inebriation. All contained within concrete. Until such a time as the bar closes and its young inhabitants drift home, to their student boxes: dirty rooms, thrown together quickly, hastily. Or brick rooms on a dusty main road, traffic grime edible in the patches of walled front gardens, an attempt at keeping the noise clutter and chaos of a street in abeyance. It is unmemorable except in its ability to linger, to stay there. Maybe a bit like mist sitting over water. It is both there and not there.
It’s 1990. While the world shifts uncomfortably, I am caught between two places. Or three. The reclamation of ‘home’ takes place continuously. Now here, now there, not anywhere.
A long road, made of an attempt to change, reaches north to Norwich. It is 1990, remember, so handwritten letters make their connections between places. Maybe phone calls in public phone boxes too. The ones that BT created as an ‘upgrade’: safe, clean and unpissable. At least, so they thought. Having landed somehow in Norwich, I somehow find my person. He is there and ready to show me around. We walk, more dusty streets, grimy with traffic. Convenience shops, betting places, takeaways.
We land in a rented house. This is home. It is dark, unloved, grimy like the street outside. Nothing good can ever happen here. It’s the last point in a terrible, terrifying downward spiral. Chinese takeaway (in my honour) and cans of Special Brew. Sugar, rotting away what is left of teeth and self. The deep darkness of the Special Brew is wrapping itself in and around the room. You can see it, almost, humming around the bare walls. There’s nowhere to sit so we are on the floor. There’s no happiness or unhappiness here. We are just existing. The time passes and at night time there is a bed of some kind, but I don’t want to stay in this place. There is no love here and no hope of love. It’s not even an option. Here is convenience shops, Special Brew (enough in a can to make food unnecessary), doctors’ visits, the chemist for cough syrup and other kinds of relief. Walking from place to place, down these streets endlessly and repeatedly. Finding and looking for nothing more than sugar. There is nothing in the world that could make me want to repeat this experience. But it leaves its memory in my fears. Those rooms that hold nothingness, pain, temporary salvation. They exist everywhere and nowhere. They live in my being. I can see them. A fear that is undying.
Untitled (End); Untitled (escape route); Untitled in yellow; All the comforts of home
the quiet room 