LIFT YOUR SKINNY FISTS LIKE ANTENNAS TO HEAVEN
Bath Spa Library Commission Prize 2025.
Book. Limewood. 51 x 51cm.
A copy of Mrs Beeton's book of Cookery and Household Management open to the page about keeping a pet. This edition, published in 1961, states that monkeys and bush babies were increasing in popularity as pets. Combining this information with the bush babies in the paintings of Raqib Shaw, whose work refers to libricide. His painting The Perseverant Prophet reflects state sponsored destruction of books, as has happened in Gaza, Srinagar and Jaffna. The deliberate destruction of history and culture. My piece speaks to caution relating to the provenance of information. The carved animals inquire of their predicted futures, whether they had autonomy, to be kept as pets. A future that did not happen and wider, the precarity of culture and civilisation. The title is a quote from the second Godspeed You! Black Emperor album.
LANDSCAPE 1
Limewood. 26 x 26cm.
This is a collage in offcuts of an illustration I drew in my sketchbook upon entering hospital with a heart condition in 2021. I decided to recreate it to see whether I could get a piece accepted by the Bath Society of Artists 120th Open Exhibition. I thought this might be something they would like.
LANDSCAPE 2
Limewood. 26 x 26cm.
This piece depicts pedestal Saint Simeon Stylites up a telegraph pole in a field outside Weymouth. Beneath him curled around the pile is a serpent, which represents the temptations of the devil.
A companion piece to the above Landscape 1, Landscape 2 has also been entered into the Bath Society of Artists 120th Open exhibition. The judging decision is due on the 16th September.
SAINT JOHN CHRYSOSTOM
Limewood. 40 x 24cm.
I have a boxed set of Tarkovsky films that I am slowly watching. I loved Andrei Rublev and wrote in my sketchbook, Simplicity Without Flourishes. I could watch it again, even though not a lot happens, slowly. In the last hour, a character, not Rublev casts a giant bell in a hole. It is quite a process. I looked up Rublev's paintings of icons and was taken with his image of Saint John Chrysostom. He had a very modern pattern on his outerwear, and I had already heard of Chrysostom because I had read that he loved St Paul so much he wanted to get physically close to him (eat him).
