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December 09, 2005

It's all in the name

Damien started it, love him. [Well he didn’t really, but he springs to mind.]

He put a shark in a tank and we would all have gone: “Oh – a shark in a tank,” except that he named it. That’s what did it. He called it: The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. Now we all gasped and sighed and the world’s media heralded a new genius.

I’ve been working on a series of images connected to the very Unstuck project that spawned these diaries. Being interested in the surface of the body and writing, I began writing on bodies.

jcpfrh-work-in-p2.jpg

This produced some good images.

mon-14a.jpg

But once in the shower the work only existed as a photograph, or more existentially as a thin trickle of dirty water heading for the main sewer. Which in itself is not a bad thing.

I wanted to take it further, into something more tangible and lasting. So I thought, well, next to the skin we have clothes. Underclothes in particular follow the contours of the body. I could write on the clothes the figure is wearing, and thus describe the form.

painted-tshirt-on-01.jpg

I’m still working on it, and I’ve just put up an image on my other site, where I title the work. [and here’s the reason for this entry] I called the image Unstuck Bodymapping, which isn’t headline grabbing, I know, but that’s not the point. I then described it: gesso and ink on fabric.

Now, that sounds very proper, and adds a sense of authority to the piece. Much better than: writing on pants for instance.

written-pants-04b.jpg

Unstuck Bodymapping, gesso and ink on fabric, 230mm x 270mm

See?

Posted by john at December 9, 2005 11:01 AM

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