It is Monday morning, I am tired and handing out tea and chocolate biscuits to Annie and David. I took the precaution of buying three packets of biscuits yesterday so that one might remain, packet not biscuit. They are here to select work for Aid & Abet’s stand at the SLUICE Art Fair. It rained last night the lingering clouds making Ipswich seem greyer than usual but inside, due to my final capitulation in the matter of the central heating, it is pleasantly warm. I’ve tidied the basement and laid out a number of pieces for their delectation. I don’t know what they will pick. Previously for art fairs (both of them) I have had half an eye on what might be commercial but this time much of my work seems very transient. Will somebody want to buy a caravan planted with cress or moss? They will have to water it daily and, in the case of the cress, harvest and reseed regularly. Additionally, with time, the caravan will rust and decay. Conversely and perversely the jelly pieces seem indestructible, what are we feeding our children?
This fair though is not really about the commercial. It seems smaller scale, more ephemeral and (apart from the title) nicer.
It is Sunday, I have just eaten a small roast dinner with Annabel. I have retired to the toilet to write and inspect Achilles the damp mould. A white fuzz continues to expand from his heart of darkness. A spider, pale, almost translucent, has strung it’s web across the corner. It reaches from Achilles’ downy surface to a series of brown lumpy craters on the adjacent wall.
I am in the bath reading about vegetable spiders stringing their webs from the earth to the moon. It is too hot. I fear dizziness when I get out and read on waiting for cooler times.
Alex Pearl
