Held under the spell
of the late Joseph Cornell,
I built a box about the size of a man:
solid mahogany, varnished, gold taps,
and lined with pure white Malayan silk.
Truth be told, I stole it from an old folk's
home and 'lost' its occupant in the Thames
on the way back to my Notting Hill muse.
I was not so much interested in 'assemblage'
as in a form of human 'decoupage'.
I invited a few of my tattooed cronies
for a pyjama party of PCP and drinkie-poos.
After a smoke or two they were much easier
- in their state of 'dissociative anesthesia' -
to receive the gentle caress
of the flensing knife. So I divested
slivers of their epidermal chef d'oeurves:
dragons, snakes, 'wino forever', 'love
and hate', and glued them with Copydex
onto my man-size mahogany death-box.
I spattered ox-blood and semen
across the smooth interior like a demon
Jackson Pollock and then filled the cavity
with statues of Ganesh, Jesus, the Virgin Mary,
added cow heads, butterflies and the laudenum
I'd fingered on my travels to various London
museums and art galleries. It became central
to my first one-man show at the ICA.
The critics raged. I found it all faintly risible
and called it: 'The Ineluctable Modality of the Visible'.
- AB 05/11/03
"I use my body in the way an artist uses paint upon the canvas. We create
new worlds, spectacles, huge lies that makes men feel good about themselves
and the world. It's all illusion, of course, but it keeps the artist in his
absinthe and me in Indian silk." Marie-Louise Fanchette, Paris brothel
owner, 1901
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