Attempting Omega, 2014. Garage Worcester.
Photo credit: Jade Blackstock
During the rut, mating season, male deer may become aggressive and can injure other stags and hinds. I searched for ethical antlers, naturally shed ones. In that search, I found a pair from a red deer sanctuary. These antlers had been cut, trimmed like fingernails. As an exchange I offered my shoulder‑length hair. I took off my clothes at the threshold.
I held the antlers and they began to hold me. The bird sounds became the song I moved with. I gave way to the space, scratching, marking the enclosure, calling out. My toes gathered thick clumps of hair. She called back. I disappeared into a field of relation where human, deer, sanctuary and body folded into one another.
As people walked past they saw glimspses and transformations, their very presence also transformed and impacted the way I moved through space and time.
I became divorced. "I am divorced, I felt divorced", I said out loud, as I came back and from.
Attempting Omega was chosen for New Arts Westmidlands, an exhibition held simultaneously at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, The Herbert Art Gallery and Museum (Coventry), and Wolverhampton Art Gallery in spring 2015. The work was selected by John Newling, Bedwyr Williams and Amna Malik. Two of my works was selected, and to my surprise I was awarded New Arts Westmidlands Turningpoint award 2015.
In the comments book at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, one visitor described the work as "blasphemic", as well as others stating ‘brave’; the blasphemy quote was a compliment of sorts. As Christianity is profoundly patriarchal, i.e. Eve as the embodiment and origin of sin and the justification for female moral inferiority. Early Judaism and Christianity: Lilith, Adam’s first wife, was casted out the garden because she expected equality and did not submit to Adam nor God. Blasphemy is only an insult inside a belief system that demands obedience; it was more of a compliment than brave. It recognised the work's disruption of the generded moral order.