Deathbed Skiing: the videos
This was an intimate performance with spoken word, choreography and a wrap-around projected forest. I’ve tidied up the videos here: Black Run and Deathbed Skiing: Last Breath / First Breath: Read some of the words here
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Hunger hiding in ‘The Haywain’
Constable’s Haywain is a famously popular painting. It’s a chocolate-box idyll of rural English life Isn’t it? In some important ways, Constable was a true radical. His ‘ rough‘ painting techniques have been described as an important precursor to Impressionism. And he transformed landscape painting. Moving it away from classical Italy towards the English countryside But his …
VOSAP: Magnificent multimorbidity
These two female figures are both self portraits, showing my multiple morbidities. My nakedness illustrates how vulnerable I can be. I’m also showing that I am more than a set of diagnoses: I am a human being and a woman. Both of the images are a collage of photographs.In my side-view, I have a bony skull …
VOSAP: Blinkin’ Obvious
This is a five by five grid of images of eyes: mostly open, but some blinking shut. In the eye’s ‘pupils’ you can see some of the many eye diagnoses I have – as well as some of the splendid things I’ve seen. Before my eyes changed, that is I’m visually impaired – I can’t …
VOSAP: More than my immobility
On occasion, I’ve been unable to stand up for long enough to brush my teeth. But I’m much more than my immobility.My spoof of Velazquez’ Toilet of Venus (1647-51) shows an immobile woman with a beautiful body. The artist and the audience are not focusing on her arms or legs.She’s got my cheeky face – …
VOSAP application: The Blind Cloning the Blind
This is my spoof of Breughel’s The Blind Leading the Blind (1584). My version has digitally erased the ditch that the sixth of Breughel’s subjects fell into. In the social model of disability, the environment is often the primary disabling factor. If only the local council followed my lead – in a real-life way – …
Safe as houses 5: Running, running, running
I wasn’t able to exercise in any of my usual ways during shielding. So this shows (a version of) me running. The ribbons from some of my Marathon medals are almost a floral spray up in the top right hand corner This collage gave me beauty and dynamism, when both of those things felt truly lacking. …
Safe as Houses 4: How safe?
The two ‘women’ in my installation reflect different parts of myself. The naked woman shows how vulnerable I felt. She’s also a commentary on the government pronouncements on deaths ‘only’ being in the old and those with pre-existing conditions. That’s me, I thought! I’ve got pre-existing conditions – so apparently my death doesn’t really count. …
Safe as houses 3: Looking out at the world.
It was very difficult not being allowed outside at all. I constructed a paper lemon tree to show some of the natural world – even if it was far far away at the end of a perspective tunnel . I went hungry when I couldn’t get any food and in this picture you can also …
Safe as Houses 2: Dead bodies
In the daily coronavirus briefings, the government blithely showed all those graphs on the front of my TV. It felt like they were ignoring the individual people whose deaths they weren’t really reporting. Those ignored dead bodies spewed out of the back of my TV. You can also see the barred door – that I’m …