I’m about halfway through my summer project, preparing work for an installation at the Old Fire Station in Carlisle, on the theme of climate change/denial/anxiety.

The project involves large portrait drawings of people with closed eyes, combined with sculptural assemblages, playing with the metaphor of Pandora’s box. Here’s a hint of the plan:

And here’s a detail of one of the drawings produced so far:

In the process of making this work, various expected and unexpected connections and resonances have arisen. Here are a few of them:

‘Living is easy with eyes closed’ – John Lennon, ‘Strawberry Fields’

‘Pandora opened a jar … containing sickness, death and many other unspecified evils which were then released into the world. Though she hastened to close the container, only one thing was left behind – usually translated as Hope, though it could also have the pessimistic meaning of “deceptive expectation”’.

(Wikipedia)

‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –
...

– Emily Dickinson

‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

– PB Shelley, ‘Ozymandias’

#anthropocene #climatedenial #comingreadyornot #hubris #posthope #solipsism #thinkingoutsidethebox #weareallcomplicit