Commissioned by Catalyst Arts, part of the Belfast Photo Festival, 2021

And, if we observe the present—

Whilst reality shivers, we hear the sound of something trying to make a sound. Here, ‘we will

allow both writing and art to operate separately, while offering the hope of

dialogue, reciprocity, poetry between the two.’

And, if we observe the present—

becoming, is all art in the ‘future perfect’? Completed gesture, action and utterance that evades becoming

past because it only rises up to meet us in the future where we encounter it.

Cold or comfortable. Stock still, or shifting. Closer and further from walls

stretched wide behind the tangible expressions we place on top of them.

A single figure reaches into the inky black of plate glass. Only

their two legs visible, a foot arched in the airless void. The shape of this

body, queer, androgyne, appears unmoored from ground or fixed form, not always

recognisable as human. In another plate, the body stands, scanned from the toes

upwards. Our eyes tread circles around the series of images, looking in lines

from one to the other, across a body of work, a body working.

Like ‘next generation’ phone screens whose surfaces are mirrored

in unique prints (A Various Group of Bodies) the language of technology

speaks to futurity when attempting to describe its own present. What has been

deserted in the burn and illumination of this figure who moves like liquid

glitched? There is distinctness, the landscape of the body depth-mapped and

made geological. Curving limbs worked away from words, splashes of hair we wear

on our heads and in soft places, atmospheres over stories. ‘There is more than

one way for a body to become.’

Text by Lucie McLaughlin, commissioned by Catalyst Arts, 2021