Omphalotomy.
The Severance of the natural umbilical chord, now typically using clamps.
My piece is a performance. I crawl into a plastic covered metal structure, my boots leaving a couple of foot prints in the bed of soil underlying the whole piece, and undress, getting changed into a body suit formed of stitched together red tights. I then go into the attached garden wire sculpture, pulling the tube through a hole from which I suck water from the wire wrapped glass, with red tight material, root-like, soaking from above. I then lie for a period, on my side in a foetal-like pose, occasionally moving, before reversing this whole process, leaving only the tights scrunched up in the greenhouse and the impression of my body in the soil. My piece brings together materials and forms that suggest the break in the natural world that we have created, primarily focused on our separation from all other species. This manifests in natural forms such as a flower being evoked in garden wire creating an unnatural feel, and the natural form of my body being contaminated by wrapping it in red tight material. Through drinking water from a tube, I also explore the the separation of mother and child through the process of birth and the severing of the umbilical chord, the lifeline of the foetus. Being inside the womb is the first and last state of being unaware of the outside world, being protected from the self awareness that develops in life, and in my work I seek to reflect upon this and the endurance and stamina needed to try and recreate this foetal-like stillness, that ultimately can never be re-found.
