Gallery Front Gallery
During the lockdown of 2020 that continued into 2021 making art felt impossible, I was blessed by good fortune and had the opportunity to work with poet Ella Frears alongside my work colleagues at the John Hansard Gallery. We were each invited to write a poem about our experiences of being a gallery assistant and in my case my double role as gallery technician fed into the work. The poetry written by my co-workers and I was performed alongside Ella's fantastic collection, and published as an extra within her publication I Am The Mother Cat under the title No Paintings, Sorry. Reflecting an all too common phrase uttered by us gallery assistants. below is my contribution to the publication
Gallery Front Gallery
They want to see what the big red giant saw, the
wheels turning as Ollie, Casper, Indy and Madonna
dance below, listen to the sound of dogs barking,
children running, forks and knives scraping on plates,
there's the beep boop as light hits the black surface
and red and blue flash, robots live here.
The genie screams as we go up, down, left, right,
forward and backward, two together peel back
the sticky layer, revealing three wishes of yellow,
red and green.
Where light once flowed in abundance and darkness
was imposed, the waterfall crashed through from above.
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Ella Frears’ I Am The Mother Cat charts, interrogates and attempts to take stock of what will surely come to be understood as one of the most surreal and haunting periods the country has known. Written as part of a residency at John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, these poems talk of the strange absences of lockdown, the nature of work and socialisation, the urge to write and create, and what it means to look out for one another in a violent world. These ideas are shadowed, deepened, by their own opposites, deployed with wit and intelligence and Frears’ subtle musicality. This special edition also includes a fold-out entitled ‘No Paintings, Sorry’ which features poems by John Hansard Gallery Assistants for National Poetry Day 2021.