CROSS SECTION

Written on 12/08/2023

I had the most amazing beautiful tiring explosive clockwork yummy funny full two days.

Last night was the closing for my first solo show. All my planning paid off and it all moved like a composition. It went so smooth. People chipped in, and showed up for the work.

They ate the food I made. The eggplant was in the fridge on Thursday, and by the time I cut into it on Friday the vegetables had absorbed each other, like I hoped they would.

I spent time with friends and family and had lovely conversations with people, and we all ate enough, and I didn’t feel bad taking the time and space I needed to process the night/people/noise.

I had about 20 minutes to myself beforehand, and I walked into the room with the napkins and I didn’t feel embarrassed.

Grace Chandler described an artistic practice as a digestive organ in one of these conversations. We talked in the cool-er hallway about the common denominators of practices (us), and how, through material motif time de-linearises, and how much we were already grieving for the changes that were coming. 

We speculated about removing that digestive system –  the internal conceptual mechanism of a practice – sitting it across from us and recognising it as its own thing, with agency and power and the ability to form relationships, like a child.

I know that nearly every emerging artist creator goes through this; of de-personalising themselves from their work. Recognising that it’s not them that brings the warmth, it’s the work’s capacity for new relationships.

It’s just strange when it happens to you. 

Your ego looks at you, and looks at the work, and looks at the space between, and you’re all looking at each other, and at other people viewing you, and further, their work, and their egos; and it goes on.

It’s a good organ and I love it like I love my dog, Delilah. She does exactly what she wants. But sometimes she’ll look at me with so much understanding I just sob.

I give her all the best bits of my food and attention. She’s trained me to wake up when she wakes up; when I hear her little feet hit the floor, I leave my comfort and obey (take her out to pee).

I wake up thinking about how I can make them stronger and healthier and worrying about whether they need water. 

Being at uni and putting my work out into the world at the same time has been bittersweet. At uni the organ’s consumption is done right in front of you. You get told whether or not the meat is overcooked while you’re sitting right there watching the knife carve. 

But last night felt new; strange and humbling and ridiculous. I felt that carving dissolve. It was more like photosynthesis. The aerated product of a million different processes that we all touched in different ways.

The food I made will find a place my friends’ cells. The wax that flaked off the grub during deinstall will get ground up with the gutter of Cockey alley to become geology after I die. 

I think the night will be a memory that I’ll tell people younger than me, when I’m older and maybe a grandma. 

And I’ll remember how silly I felt for feeling the special-ness of the time, and even sillier for not being able to convey how much I really really appreciated everyone being there.

And how long it has taken me to find something worth holding. It’s like feeling the sun after a really long time and it hurts my chest to even think about it leaving me again.