WitCH the show!

21/9/14
Once upon a time I was a writer and before I had a heart attack in 2002, I would have written about WitCH just as I wrote about Medusa another of my favourite images.. the goddess of life and death, through one side her veins give life and through the other they give death. (I am not a goddess type of feminist). Somehow though growing up as a girl I registered that Medusa had ‘power’, the power to protect herself against invasive things, which as a girlchild I did not seem to have. I had no such relationship with WitCH but I am discovering it!
How does a new piece of art come about? From bits and pieces, from research, from a concept? For me, the coalescing of these 3 things over what could be several years. This piece came from a panel of old wood drawer which I had used in 2009 in an earlier work and did not want to break up or throw away. I liked the the fretwork of the old dovetailed joints, its matt blackboard paint surface and the pale green drip all the way down.
I’ve been collecting the single gloves you find dropped around the streets.. a hand from the past let this go.. and they were nearly all black..here a connection with Tracy Emin child’s glove (in brass) on the railings near the Foundling Museum. This one leather,surface creased like an old hand. Lastly from a series of photographs I took of old light bulbs, their fragility/toughness/iconic shape/symbolism as we moved into the ugly energy-saving ones, I took the centres from the original broken bulbs.. all these things around my studio gradually made sense together.. Voila.. new work. At the time there was no WitCHness there.