In Lieu (of All We Are)

A textual installation at Plas Bodfa as part of Sui Generis - an artists takeover event involving more than 60 international artists over two-years, culminating in an open-house exhibition for the 2019 Anglesey Arts Weeks festival...

The strong black and white tiled design of one of the toilet and bathrooms suggested the grid of a crossword to me. I considered the toilet. Of course, Duchamp's Fountain (1917 & 1964) came to mind, but whereas his contextualised urinal discusses gender divisions, the standard loo is a gender, race, and class unifying object. When we use it we are like each other. Using the toilet is something the Queen does. We know Elvis did. Your neighbour probably uses the toilet. It is a human experience we share in privileged society. Yet also something very private.

Salvador Dali famously said that his best ideas came to him as he defecated. He would place a decorative and highly scented flower behind an ear and meditate on the toilet. For many, this time alone when doing their biological business is the closest thing to meditation and mindfulness they get on a regular basis. We become aware of our bodily function and our fleeting thoughts, a merging of the corporeal and temporal...

For In Lieu (of All We Are), the somewhat overwhelming aromatic element was provided by an antique bottle of Savile Row aftershave, emptied into the disconnected drains. It is a scent contemporary with the period in the 1970s when Plas Bodfa was a Steak House and diners may have inconsiderately worn such a strong aftershave. Perhaps residents of the Care Home it became in the '80s would also have felt the distinctive aromatic nostalgia? A lingering ghost smell from the past, intangible and abstract as the thoughts they had thought in that room. 

The textual passages written for the installation were fragments of ideas, story sparks, poetic vignettes and random ramblings. The disorganised ideas and trains of thought that pass through my mind as I pass the time upon the 'throne', whilst passing... The words were bilingually written in English and Welsh, though also passed through different translation systems that digested and excreted meaning.

The written pieces remained unfinished and unpublished in any other format. The exceptions were a few verses from the Bible, translated into Cymraeg and then, inaccurately, transcribed back to Saesneg. Sometimes the words were sent via Morse coded versions as light. These biblical passages were about speaking in tongues and the unreliability of language to convey abstract thought. The words were on the walls, with a few 'key phrases' pasted onto pedestals, bath-side, window and floor - transmitted from the mind of the author into the receptive minds of the readers, but only when the private room became a public space and the author was absent. 

ARE   WE   ALL   WE   ARE

(Images copyright 2019 Remy Dean - please credit)

In Lieu (of All We Are) was shown as part of Sui Generis
during Anglesey Arts Weeks, 13 - 28 April 2019, at Plas Bodfa

Sui Generis was listed in the
Top 10 Best Visual Arts Exhibitions of 2019
by Wales Arts Review