Monday 5 December 2016

What are you trying to say Ms Hamilton?

 

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You erect
as a doorway within a brick wall
a gigantic pair of buttocks
Clutched by a pair of hands.

You suspend in mid air
in front of a brick corner
a clothes hanger
bearing a suit
of brick patterned weave.

You place a pebble filled,
thigh high, high heeled
ladies leather boot
on a pedestal
with lichens and fungi
saprophytically seeping from its seams and stitches
like a decaying tree trunk.

These material juxtapositions
These unnatural pairings
Jar our eyes
Compel us to touch, to sniff
In expectations of flesh giving
of threads loosening
of polish smelling.
But that’s not what happens.

Instead our minds reel
baffled by the bum
confused by the crotch.
Should we put on the suit
and like an asshole walk through
some mushroom powered psychedelic trip
to unravel and experience the installation’s truth?

No.
we just stand
bemused and bewildered by your art
asking “what ARE you trying to say?”

© Sheila Ash, 2016

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/sep/26/turner-prize-2016-review-tate-britain-micheal-dean-anthea-hamilton-helen-marten-josephine-pryde