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TW: sexual violence, rape The Minotaur (Damien Hirst, 2012, image from art.net) This depiction of the half-man, half-bull of Greek myth raping an Athenian virgin presents the violent threat of unfettered male sexuality. Greek and Roman myths abound with brutal stories of the sexual assault of women by men and gods alike. Classical art often aestheticized such scenes, sanitising any explicit reference to intercourse. In myth, such assaults were partly rationalised by claiming that the god Eros was capable of overpowering male bodies and wills at any moment. This pre-Freudian distinction between the conscious and unconscious suggests the Minotaur – which has remained a symbol of sexual violence and male lust, most prominently in the work of Picasso – might here be read as a horrific embodiment of the sleep of reason.  ( Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable guide p. 33) The sleep of reason. From whose perspective? In my experience rapists take what they feel they deserve. W...

You know the hit is coming and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Your body braces automatically even though logic dictates it won’t make any difference. The torrent is coming at you hard and fast. You are vulnerable. Helpless. Perhaps your slight cower is an attempt at self-comfort and assurance. You did all you could. Broader events were beyond your control. It’s not your fault. You’re collateral damage, and it means nothing about you. It is natural to curl into yourself because who else can you rely on? A saviour, a hero, surely couldn’t make it in time.   Andromeda and the Sea Monster , Damien Hirst, 2011, image June 2017 Andromeda and the Sea Monster is a monumental sculpture in blue bronze depicting a young naked woman chained to a rock face, her head angled off to her right and her mouth open in a horrific silent scream, mirroring the wide, toothy mouths of hungry sea creatures frozen in time and space as they surge at her. You could only see the woman’s scream if ...

  Cronos Devouring his Children , Damien Hirst, 2011, image from Pinterest I remembered his eyes bulging as he tore his children apart. They were actually closed and his mouth gaped. You can almost hear the yells of him. Perhaps my memory of the bulging eyes and manic flesh eating came from an equally graphic painting rather than this sculpture. Knowing me, it was of a totally different character if so. Much of the confronting horror of Cronos Devouring his Children is obscured by coral, with enough of the scene visible that Cronos’s headless young son stretched between his hands and other children gripping his knees evoke the debauched fuller picture. There are other figures around the mounded base of the sculpture, and the guide text assures me that baby Zeus, who would go on to liberate his siblings from inside of his father and later destroy him in the Olympians’ war against the Titans, is present, but I can’t verify this for myself from the photos at my disposal. As happens...

With my mum in hospital and the uncertainty around her care, and then all the running about that having a close relative in hospital involves, it has been difficult to find headspace for writing at all, and writing for my DYCP project specifically. Rather appropriately, I started vaguely reading Geoff Dyer’s Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of D. H. Lawrence (Abacus, 1997) in which Dyer wants to write a book about D. H. Lawrence but finds himself doing anything but writing a book about D. H. Lawrence. This is my current experience with my Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable project. At least my ACE grant is about developing practice and doesn’t expect a big shiny outcome other than a report on the development of your practice. But I do really want a manuscript to come out of it. So I’m carving snatches of time between hospital runs to write something , even if it’s skirting the edges of what I really want and ought to be writing about. Plus it’s cathartic, getting stuff out ...

I wasn’t going to try to blog for a bit. The material I had scheduled has dried up and I haven’t prepared any more. I was feeling a bit of pressure with increasing deadlines in my paid work and the ramping up of my Arts Council England project to the writing practice phase when we were hit hard with Covid infections. I’m feeling angry that the deemed-on-our-behalf healthy and working population haven’t been offered an autumn booster when it was inevitable that all the nasty viruses would be rampant as soon as schools and universities were back in action. By the same measure I’m grateful I had 3 jabs in 2021, even if their efficacy has waned as I suspect my infection may have been severe enough to warrant hospitalisation had I had no protection at all. I’m recovering a tiny bit more every day, but progress is slow and I am significantly weakened.   On top of that my mum had an accident and needed emergency surgery on a fractured hip. I’ve been very anxious about such a scenario for ...

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In part 25 I noted how I spotted some of the works from Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable as Damien Hirst performed an Instagram walkthrough of his studio as he talked through his large Cherry Blossom paintings. Many of his recent (March/April 2022) posts show him active in making work, a lone figure toiling in vast studio spaces. Not long after my comment pointing out my observation, posted on 20 April was a 15-second 360 tracking shot around a sculpture of Goofy with coral shapes and damage pocks around his body. The caption states:  2,000 year old treasure found at the bottom of the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Africa, made from pink portugese [sic] marble. Those dead artists knew what they were doing. Hahaha This insider sneak peek can't help but feel pointed for me after the Hirst account acknowledged my observation of some of the other works in a prior video. It is likely a coincidence - and that is the fun to be had in indulging in these minor-scale specul...

Screenshot of Hirst's Instagram studio walkabout and our exchange. I know, it's been ages - the guts of 2 years since part 24 . Lately my interest in Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable has resumed and I've been exploring avenues to properly kickstart and make a go of the book project.    It's funny when things spontaneously collide. I could almost  be tempted to believe in serendipity but I think we're just more alert to things when we're of a mind to be. So, I'm in the midst of writing funding applications and project proposals to do something with my 40,000 words (!) of draft work in these blog posts, and what pops up on my Instagram feed but sponsored posts from Damien Hirst's account promoting his cherry blossom paintings showing in Japan. This was no surprise given that the Audiovisual Cultures account follows a great deal of artists, including Hirst's fellow Young British Artist Tracy Emin. It seems that business or verified account...