The Hexting Project

The Hexting Project Thirty artists respond sequentially to a text

Witch’s Hair Witch’s hair, hellbine or devil’s guts is a parasitic vine - fleshy tendrils sniff out juicy hosts to sink their fangs into - locked-on and fortified it spreads to neighbouring plants - a tangled inter-net-work like a mass communication artery it shares viruses or updates on the latest existential threat.

Like a dog on a scented trail sniffing and weaving its way, some breeds trained to devour. The intelligence of smell. Nosing around. Odour drawn... for consumption at a cellular level. Even lying dormant for some time until future conditions prove ready to spread.

Mycelium works its way through last year's debris. Long slender tendrils search in the dark for warmth and connection, an undercover investigation. Truth seeker, earth turner, converting what has gone into something which will be. Each unfurled branch a new synapse, a thought, a possibility.

I am between things, here and there, night and day; on a hinge between darkness and light. I struggle to keep hold of the things shifting before me; slide and shift.

They move, dissolve, bleed, fracture and re-emerge. Shape shifting, shifting shape.

Underneath. Yesterday I buried a robin. It had no head and one leg was separated.

It rests under the bench opposite the hedge where it was nesting. Where I sit and listen to the evening chorus.

Be outwardly middle class, take photographs of poor people eating cheap food in a greasy cafe and exhibit them as a representation of, ‘Britain Now’ or ‘Reflections on Britain’ or something like that.

Or something like that.

Lyrics: Faithless - ‘Mass Destruction’

(After Lucas Cranach)

Louise Bourgeois, Tits, 1967

She grew the eggplant Smooth ivory whiteness nestled Longing for madness

Wondered about the mushrooms, the fungus, not the magic ones, and the palm trees, the poppies, the heroin shipment. But not now, another season. Another time.

Call back

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; Our meddling intellect Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things: We murder to dissect

Enough of Science and of Art; Close up those barren leaves; Come forth, and bring with you a heart That watches and receives Fragment of poem ‘The Tables Turned’ by William Wordsworth

#onewalkaday

Cure for wellness

Beware Wellness charlatans will crawl behind your eyes, skidding on the lovely glossy surface, leaving grit and dirt that will scratch at your sensibilities. They will plant seeds of a growth which will creep its way to your core, then on to the edges of your love. The growth will suck and steal at your power, leaving a limp drained, yet still beautiful, shell. Your beauty will always remain, but you’ll be left with a hollow that will only be filled by questions which have no answer.

We are authors of a temporal narrative; personal and collective. We accumulate, postpone, suspend and slow down time to accommodate our temporary confinement. Such discontinuities are fragments of our cultural belonging, formed in the process of becoming.

I loved butterfly houses when I was a kid. I would stare for as long as I could at the chrysalises hoping to see some sort of ‘event’ – a twitch, or split, an antenna reaching out, a wing unfurling. But I never did. It felt disappointing at the time, it was only later I found out how slow the process actually was. The word ‘transformation’ always sounded to me like an ‘abracadabra’ kind of moment. A puff of smoke. But the reality for the butterfly couldn’t be more different. Instead its transformation is a sequence of slow hardening, growth more akin to decay and an arduous emergence; after which it dangles helpless in its fragile and soft new form. But with a silent and immense effort from both within and without it expands its wings, patiently dries them out as confidently and adeptly as any experienced pilot.

List of Contributors: Sam Pickett, Abigail Barton, Amy Stretch-Parker, Ann Carragher, Beata Bea, Bonnie Craig, Thea Luckcock, Carolyn Morton, David Mackintosh, Fern Nicholas, Jane Fairhurst, Jayne Simpson, Jessica Earle, Julie Mayer, Julia Swarbrick, Keeley Bentley, Laura Harrison, Lauren Sagar, Leo, Maisy Bliss, Mat Birchall, Ola Dabrowska, Paula Fenwick-Lucas, Roberta Cialfi, Ruth Warman, Sovay Berriman, Sarah Feinman, Steph Fletcher, Steph Shipley, Jocelyn McGregor in that order.