ART ODOUR - ODOROUS ART
My PhD work is proving to be very evocative - often when talking about how the research started, I find the conversation quickly becomes infused and engulfed with people’s memories and personal associations with perfumes and fragrances and the attempts to describe and recall people, situations, commemorative experiences…. I have always wanted to harness this ‘power’ with my art practice with these conjunctions - what is produced?…. please feel free to share any experiences, especially if you are a practitioner.
The Fear of Tupperware
Plastic boxes within boxes, containers contained, nothing goes to waste with Tupperware. Spares, carefully crammed into the wall mounted kitchen cupboard, awkwardly affixed over the chest freezer. The shelf impeded the freezer lid. Our house was crammed with too much stuff.
Sliding open the cupboard door, perched on steps, dragged over the lino, was a chore, having to scan for the relevant sized box. The phobia came from having to find the right sized box, then find the matching lid, then having the patience to restock, re-size order and replace un-required receptacles. There is a misery in mis-matching, recursion made me curse. Squirrelling clutter away was one of my mother’s strengths. My inability to exquisitely squirrel was always met with maternal disdain. The daughter of an abusive third hand on a Grimsby fishing vessel, her second hand attachments extended to furniture, clothing, anything bestowed or needing rid-of. I had first hand experience of her cruelty. I was a sensitive, creative child - who ‘didn’t know I was born’. I couldn’t bear these Grimbarians. However, Grimsby, bore a different desire.
My first artwork I can ever possibly recall, beckoned me into the town, the anticipation of spying the statue, from afar, from the back of my father’s car was cherished. ‘The Nudey Man’ caught my eye, held my attention. Striding in front of the college, the figure and his gait appealed, a longer gaze, from heavy traffic. Did sculpture make me gay? Accumulation and androphilia inform my practice, my childhood susceptibility - Grimsby rubbed off on me or perhaps the opposite?
Addiction/Heron Porn 2014-2024
The piece has been an unassuming work in progress, linking digital hoarding with art and porn addictions, culminating in an array of a collection from various sites over the years. Images were constantly collected and ‘dumped’ into a folder, recently I decided to give the project closure and create a visual thumbnail / spreadsheet. There is a nod to the German conceptual artist’s Timm Ulrichs’ 1992 work Kunst und Leben and to Simon Fujiwara’s installations Since 1982 at Tate St Ives.
I particularly like the fact that Patrick Heron’s work Horizontal Stripe Painting November 1957 - January 1958 is displayed wrongly, the horizontal becomes vertical, in many of the images.
Censored due to adult content.
