Fruit

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Solo exhibition featuring a series of drawings, ceramic snakes, a site-specific wall piece and an edition of hand-cast ceramic poppers bottles.

Shown at 25 London Road, 8 July – 5 August 2023.

It’s 1998, and the writers Samuel Delany and Octavia Butler are talking about hypertext at MIT. Texts are not linear. Texts are multiple and for anybody who really reads and enjoys reading, it is an interactive process, says Delany. I generally have four or five books open around the house — I live alone; I can do this — and they are not books on the same subject, says Butler, They don’t relate to each other in any particular way, and the ideas they present bounce off one another. And I like this effect.

A folder of folders on my desktop — an attempt at taxonomy (or at least at understanding). They have names such as Alvin_Baltrop, Cadaver_monuments, Fascinus, Glitterbug, Happy_Together, Harmen_Steenwijk, Homo_Bulla, Maria_Sybella_Merian, Rupertia, Sacro_Bosco, Sebald_Beham, Snakes, Star_Trek_TNG. Another folder: Boys_to_draw. 

Images and information are rifled through. Printouts are made. Sheets of cheap office paper —damp with the heavy ink — are folded, cut, taped together. Scanned, printed, folded and taped some more. (Collage is so gay, Jem wrote.) They become object-like: Still _life compositions, Vanitas, Memento_mori.

Flattened again, pressed like botanical samples. Ink and gouache run like living stuff. Like seed. 

FRUIT: queen in Polari.

At the National Gallery last year I took pictures of Flowers in a Glass Bottle on a Marble Plinth, painted around 1670 by Jan Davidsz. de Heem. The bouquet is home to a menagerie: earwig, snail, spider and bee, a symbol of labour. For Ambroise and Jean-Marie, the two young fishermen gazed upon in Jean Epstein’s 1929 film Finis_Terræ, the seaweed they harvest is the fruit of their labour. Their love (fraternal or otherwise) is tested when Ambroise breaks Jean-Marie’s only bottle of wine. Many displays of pent-up angst, anger and frustration follow. Ambroise clenches his fist around a shard of glass and cuts his thumb. Jean-Marie exhausts himself, brawling with the ocean and the elements. Here, nature is raw and unadulterated. But also: seaweed is extracted and dried on the rocks and a crab is carried by one leg.

A handsome Saint_Francis painted in 1639 meditates on a skull. His hood is pulled back, his worn garments reflect his vow of poverty. He is the patron saint of (among other things) animals, ecology and stowaways.

FRUITCAKE: nutty, as in insane or mentally ill. Historically applied to LGBT people.

Built by Giambologna in the late 1580s, the Apennine_Colossus is an 11-metre tall bearded mountain daddy regarded as a personification of nature, specifically the Apennine range. He squeezes the head of a serpentine sea monster who spurts water into a lake. 

FRUIT MACHINE: a device built to aid in the detection of homosexuality in the Canadian Civil Service.

On the Bonhams website: a copy of Caravaggio Studies, annotated by Derek_Jarman for his production designer (Dear Christopher here is an annotated Caravaggio buon viaggio derek. see you in Rome). Across the top of PLATE 1. Basket of Fruit. Milan, Ambrosiana, he’s written Surely C was just fed up with flowers. he painted all the decay. Remember Dexter Fletcher as young Caravaggio and as young Caravaggio as Mario Minniti? “In plain English mate, I’m an art object, and very, very EXPENSIVE.”

SUCK A FRUIT FOR ANITA: a double entendre used by LGBT activists in response to orange juice spokesperson Anita Bryant’s campaign to overturn anti-discrimination laws.

An OF boy displays his wares like a costermonger. Sexualities involving senses other than the visual are depicted visually in pornography. The boys presenting socks, bare feet, trackies, etc. are known in the genre as masters. They are worshipped by slaves. Master TNT gets into his stride. Slap, huck, gob, slap. Face close enough for the tenderest kiss. They perform in domestic spaces amid still life arrangements of household objects and houseplants. 

It’s 1938 and Keith_Vaughan is spending the heatwave summer photographing friends on Pagham Beach. Some of the images will end up in Dick’s Book of Photos — a handmade album dedicated to his deceased brother — that itself has been described as a kind of memento_mori.

Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt? Where are those who were before us?

Special thanks to William Baker, Princess Julia, Gina Hewitt, Logan and Frank at 25 London Road, Rowan Corkhill at Common Mormon Art Studios, Patrick and Jaf at Project 78, Chris at Birdsnest + Co., Simon at Color Makes People Happy, Jacob at True Level Art Handling and Jeremy Atherton Lin.