6. ARE WE ALL JUST MR POTATO HEAD ?| Bits
Technically humans are meant to all be a blueprint. A scientific formula producing the same organs, limbs and vessels - we’re all just made of bits really. It’s evident though that we’re not all the same; in consciousness, personality, beliefs, cultures, and yes, bodies.
I like to think how we are all basically glorified *Mr Potato Heads (*choose your prefix.) Sometimes I do just wish I had no thoughts or feelings or morals and was just a plastic potato.
Our bodies are our home. Temples they say. Chipped away at by love and cigs and drink and letting the good times roll. We are all intrinsically linked, whether we like it or not. Bodies tell the stories of our cells, architecture tells the stories of our histories and wall frescos tell us the naughty bits of the past.
Our collective lives are ruled by the insatiable human drive for money, power, politics and our bodies are driven by hormones, health and the complexities of emotion. For we are all just bits. Retro fits and smoked cigarettes. Memories carried in our organs and held in our auras. We are made of the earth and we will all return to the earth. Holding our stories and our love and the laughter that we shared. We are seismic worlds and minutiae. Beats and breathes and elastic tissues stretch. None of us knows, what we are doing, placing our souls on this land, so torn and so holy.
We’re the lucky ones if there is breath in our lungs and hope swirling in our gut.
They say the eyes are the soul or is it our bellies?
I would ask you to consider who is the most alive person you know?
*This piece of writing is picture heavy because there’s so much cute stuff to share!
This summer (2023) I did a two week residency at the incredible Cyprus College of Art (pictured at the top.) Cyprus College of Art is a historical and magical staple of Cyprus. It is there I made my latest sculpture ‘BITS’ (pictures above.) It was a hot one. I ended up welding in a heatwave which was sweaty and at times near impossible. Sometimes I just shouted fuck really loudly and tried to wrestle my long-sleeved welding shirt off in a big hurry and got tangled up in my PPE, even hotter, under a sheltered roof trying to lurk sheepishly in the shade. It was hard to get my trousers off at the end of the day. I must’ve downed gallons of Adonis, the local bottled water. Nothing worth doing is easy though eh? Eventually welding became nationally band because of safety concerns due to the heatwave but luckily I finished just in time.
The inspiration for my piece was a prosthetic leg and epithelial cells. It’s a sculpture of resilience, joy, a celebration of our bodies because health is wealth and so much of modern culture is about berating bodies and worshipping questionable personalities and souless politicians instead of admiring everyday, decent people and the bits and bobs we’re made of. When I was making this for some reason Brand New Ancients by Kae Tempest jolted into my head and I relistened to their 2014 masterpiece thinking about what a great title they decided on and that I wished I’d thought of it. I could probably just type out their whole piece, picking out every single line from their work because their work is so spot on but this sentence stuck out to me:
We are still mythical, permanently trapped somewhere between the heroic and the pitiful.
I say this having only made one sculpture a year so far (!) but, after finally returning to my sculptural practice last summer, making my initial sculpture in 2022, Praise You felt a lot about me feeling a frustrated need to highlight the importance of staff/cleaners of The NHS whilst also thrashing out some of my own energy through metalwork. BITS however, felt like a bit of a breakthrough. I am proud to say it will be permanently installed in the new extension of the The Great Wall of Lempa sculpture wall, which is a really big deal to me and an honour. I enjoyed making it up as I went along and feeling the familiar happy exhaustion from battling metal all day (even more so in the heat and with limited tools. I haven’t used a stick-welder since 2012 and you have to tap to start an arc and it can just stick to the metal instead, so there was also a lot of mumbling of swear words under my mask.) Picking the colours sporadically on a quick journey to the shop - I intended to pick the colours of an ambulance but the epithelial sculpture looks more like a flame to me, with the colours of Jamaica. I welcome this as The NHS recently celebrated 75 years of substantial contributions from The Windrush generation who are so often overlooked.
When I was there I felt a wild and deep appreciation of having the time and finances to spend two weeks making art. Next to the love of my life - the sea! We live in a stinky hustle culture world so I know what a luxury this was. Some may say welding in that heat is not a luxury……
Take a look at the finished pieces:
Thank you to Richard Matthews for some of these lovely pics above!
The Great Wall of Lempa - the sculpture wall at Cyprus College of Art is something else, previous artists have christened the place in one big historical art filled commotion of a wall. It feels sacred and I’m glad places exist that have so much soul and life about them. I’m hoping to return as I would love to build a line up of limbs and cells and bits and bobs and to eat more of the local mezze. A snake tried to come at me when I was down and out. I’d stupidly gone on a walk in the midday sun with no water, and I also stupidly threw a rock at it so I could see it and take a picture of it’s scary face (pathetic millennial behaviour) but it slithered away, so I also need to return to our unfinished business of a wildlife based photoshoot. Any excuse to return.….
The residency also consisted of cool off swims and laughing loads in the beloved sea, making cockroach barriers out of books to block the doorways because they’re so spooky and sneaky, museum trips full of stunning local objects, learning histories and crossing the border between the Greek and the Turkish side and the best bit of all, new friends. One night we learnt of the history of CCA and about the founder, Stass Paraskos in a beautiful talk by Margaret Paraskos and Emilios Koutsoftides sitting on plastic chairs and sipping cold wine in the evening heat.
Thank you to Emilios and Margaret for the lifts, support and truly special experience.
Pictured clockwise from the top: Clay vessels used as hot (oil) bottles for the body - Pafos was a famous medical centre in The Roman era, plank shaped figurines that may’ve been miniature versions of deities associated with fertility and regeneration ca. 2100 - 1600 BC, cool curtain, cockroach barrier of books, the sea, evening presentation about Stass Paraskos, my studio space, Margaret Paraskos, Hannah, Eve Wilbraham, Lucinda Metcalfe, Richard Matthews, Cyprus College of Art, Adonis H2O life giver, me probably mumbling swearwords.
【ｒｅｃｏｍ ｍｅｎｄａｔｉｏｎｓ】
Lady Sings the Blues - A story of resilience, glamour and demise. I read this lying on the beach and felt so blown away by Billie’s energy blaring off the pages.
Family Tree at Tobacco Factory Theatres - Woah. I don’t see plays often, but on the subject of bodies and autonomy this play about Henrietta Lacks written by Mojisola Adebayo is a beautiful and powerful story about the legacy of Lacks cells - who have probably played a large role in your life without you knowing so……. Read more here.
how much money I made this year - this is an incredible read on The White Pube. It really highlighted the question - can you sustain a love and passion for your creativity when it makes day to day life financially implicated? Something I’ve regularly thought about.
Thanks for reading!
