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A Note about the exhibition…

It struck me, during a recent experience of rehoming an abandoned duck, that I was being extremely caring towards it, even when it was being annoying and flapping about. I knew it was just scared.  It got me thinking that I don’t treat myself with the same tenderness when I’m scared or flapping.  We humans have such a tendency to be ashamed of ourselves or think we’re wrong for being imperfect. 

If there’s one antidote to the pressures of constant advancement, I think it’s to soften more into our animal essence. It’s to zoom backwards to our most basic nature, not keep pushing forwards, boats against the current, in the hope of going further still.  To collectively choose, instead of walking through the metaphorical desert for a thousand miles, burning ourselves out, to walk with bare feet in the soil of our back garden. To plant a daffodil, watching as it takes its sweet time to grow towards the sun. To feel the light of the sun on our face. The warm, golden light that reminds us we are unique, deserving creatures. Creatures that have been endowed with belonging that doesn’t need to be earned through a set of accomplishments. To sit around the fire sharing stories. To gaze at the moon and wonder how on earth we came into existence. 

And, at times, to feel tiny and insignificant.  To worry that we haven’t, and never possibly could have, done everything we set out to do in our lives. To feel terrified of what our actions or non-actions might mean for our children and theirs. To feel the sensations in our bodies when we fight with loved ones; the rushing heart-beat, the flushing face. To remember that life is an inconceivably weird and miraculous gift with joys and sorrows and everything in between, and we get to live it. We get to feel it all.

This is what makes us human. All living beings have an unreplicable collective history embedded in our DNA that AI will never have access to.  Like my friend Tabby said, robots will never understand why I go to the foreshore to scrabble around looking for signs of life in broken clay pipes or dismembered sheep teeth.  

When I mudlark I am trying to get into the ground, and away from my mind.  I’m reaching into the past, washed up by the sea, to find an antidote to an uncertain future.  I’m searching for truth in the stones, digging around for raw matter that shows me I matter - that I belong in the family of things. 

We make everything so complicated; we have built cities and structures and jobs and currencies and monarchies. We have made beauty so important that people cut into their bodies to look more attractive. But for what? None of that will matter if AI takes over or the world floods. All we really have is each other. Our friends, our family. Our bodies. The land, the soil, the sun and sky…

Maybe we need something dramatic to finally make us put down our worn-out-tools and just rest. Maybe it’ll be then and only then that we reassess where we’ve misplaced value, or invented meaningless milestones, and we can settle into a more humble existence. Maybe we’ll have more time to laugh together, to feel, to be. Maybe we can start to embody the peace we want to see in the world. 

Maybe we can learn to create a home within our own body before we strive for a big house that’ll solve all our problems. Or we could all build eco-houses out of soil, straw and pebbles…

Maybe we will remember that we are not broken, so we can stop striving. That we only have to let the soft animal of our body love what it loves.