Nicola Anthony

Invite: Opening night, Displacements – 1 June 2013

Nicola Anthony — Tue, 21 May 2013 01:09:40 +0000

Join me for an art exhibition in Singapore. What happens when 16 artists are let loose in a house that is about to be bulldozed?

RSVP to the OPENING PARTY on Facebook HERE

AND…… RSVP to the EXHIBITION on Facebook HERE

RSVP by email here: hello@13wilkieterrace.com

Find out more at www.13wilkieterrace.com, or check out the ‘behind the scenes’ – An 8000 piece artwork: What’s been going on in my studio.

New Exhibition: Ambiguous Portrait of a Cunning Linguist, Ikkan Art

Nicola Anthony — Mon, 20 May 2013 03:00:37 +0000

I am thrilled to announce that I have been selected as a Young Artist to exhibit in an exhibition about verbal imagery – opening on 7th June at Ikkan Art Gallery, Singapore.

I am honoured to be exhibiting alongside internationally renowned artists who have been inspirations to my own art practice, including Ashley Bickerton, Mel Bochner, Glenn Ligon, Harland Miller, Lucas Samaras, Gary Simmons, Stezaker, and Lawrence Weiner.

More info here

Found Articles: Anish Kapoor in Berlin: ‘in short, Britain’s fucked’ – The Guardian

Nicola Anthony — Sat, 18 May 2013 02:43:05 +0000

An interesting read about one of my favourite British/Indian artists, and his opinions on the art scene contrasts between UK and Germany – written this week in the Guardian by Kate Connolly (See original here)

The doyen of British sculpture gives the Guardian an exclusive preview of his major new exhibition in the German capital

Anish Kapoor’s Shooting Into the Corner Photograph: Nic Tenwiggenhorn/Martin-Gropius-Bau

Sitting in a Berlin gallery over a cup of tea, Anish Kapoor is clearly at home in a city that is about to stage one of his largest ever shows.

The British-based artist says the exhibition, entitled Kapoor in Berlin, is the best show he has yet put on, which may have much to do with the fact that he feels Germany demonstrates a huge degree of respect for the arts – in stark contrast to Britain.

“Germans have a rather healthy respect for the arts and artists,” he said, in an exclusive interview with the Guardian, adding that that attitude could “not be more different” from the British perspective.

“In Germany, it seems that the intellectual and aesthetic life are to be celebrated and are seen as part of a real and good education, whereas in Britain, traditionally – certainly since the Enlightenment – we’ve been afraid of anything intellectual, aesthetic, visual.”

These perspectives were reflected in the two countries’ drastically differing policies on financial support of the arts, he said.

“In the UK, while the arts are the second biggest sector after banking, they probably form less than one tenth of 1% of government spending. It’s completely scuzzy. The UK has two things, the arts and education, and both of them it pushes into the corner. It’s the hugest, hugest mistake. Why do British ministers meet anyone from the arts other than to cut them? Compared to Germany, Britain has got quite a long way to go there, frankly

“In short, Britain’s fucked.”

One of the most highly regarded sculptors in the world, Kapoor is keeping much of the vast show, which covers more than 3,000 sq metres (0.7 acres) at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, under wraps. But he does reveal that around half the works were created especially for the show. It was, he explained, his concerted effort to stop it from becoming a retrospective, the idea of which he is keen to resist as long as he is alive and working.

“I don’t see the reason to be doing a retrospective,” he said. “Let somebody else do a retrospective for me. There doesn’t seem any reason to dwell on what’s been done. Rather, let’s build on it and try and do something else. I’m trying to push my practice out there and to see, ‘Can I do that? Will it go there?’

“A good half of the show is new, and that’s always a risk. But that’s the sort of idiot I am.”

Kapoor in Berlin is a culmination of the artist’s huge body of work of the past three decades, an extravaganza of colour, shapes and textures that its British curator, Norman Rosenthal, has called an “endlessly inventive theatre of sculpture“.

As Kapoor chatted, around him bustling workers in hard hats glided up and down on cranes, sprayed pigment on to walls, and removed plastic covers from sculptures as the show took shape.

Later, in a sneak preview, the Guardian was invited to see the works, including the centrepiece of the show.

Emerging from holes in walls and a trapdoor in the floor, conveyor belts rise skywards, carrying big rectangular blocks of viscous, wine-red wax. As the wax moves up, it produces a squelching sound before falling off the end of the belt and landing with a satisfying splat on the linoleum floor. Overseen by a huge crimson sphere suspended from a metal frame, Symphony for a Beloved Sun is a new creation that fills the gallery’s main atrium.

Along with the other structures, it reveals the potential the show has to beguile the public, something Kapoor’s audience has long come to expect of him. There is everything from a deflated whale, whose maroon mass spills across three rooms, to warty, cave-like innards fashioned from synthetic resin, huge geometrically fragmented mirrors, twisted stainless steel pillars and a gigantic, slowly rotating wax bell. There is even an old British Telecom generator.

Crafted from sandstone, alabaster, Kilkenny limestone and fibreglass are also the protuberances and orifices, mountains and tomb-like structures that have become Kapoor trademarks, including the subtle bulge in the wall called When I’m Pregnant, all of which reflect the long and complex history of Britain’s most celebrated sculptor in a show he said was “private and public in a very curious, sometimes uncomfortable mix”.

Exhibiting at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, a neo-renaissance pile in the centre of Berlin, was both a challenge and an inspiration for Kapoor, who had to deal not just with its complicated, decorative interior,of late-19th-century ornate pillars and mosaics but also with the history that envelops the building: the Berlin Wall and the SS headquarters are literally squeezed up against it, visible from the gallery’s windows; and he makes deliberate references to them in his works.

“It’s a building with a curious, difficult history that is inexorably linked to the history of Berlin,” he said. “That’s very potent. You can’t make a show here without some reference to all of that. And it certainly makes a show here so much more interesting.”

Symphony for a Beloved Sun is a nod to one of Kapoor’s heroes, the late German sculptor Joseph Beuys, who exhibited in the same atrium space shortly after the building’s postwar restoration, in 1982. It also strongly alludes to the industrialised, bloody mass murders of the Nazi era, according to Rosenthal. German critics have been quick to make the same connection to the favourite among Kapoor’s fan base, Shooting into the Corner – which has been given a room of its own – in which a cannon fires round pellets of wax into the far corner, staining the walls a blood red.

“We’re pleased to say the wax stains can be removed when smeared with margarine,” said the Martin-Gropius-Bau’s director, Gereon Sievernich, highlighting just one of the many challenges the 59-year old artist’s works have posed as he inspected a show that is still very much under construction five days ahead of its opening.

Other practical headaches have included the transportation, by a convoy of lorries, of the huge pieces from Kapoor’s Camberwell studio. Some had to be dismantled before they could be brought into the gallery; others were heaved in on horizontal cranes after window frames had been removed.

For Kapoor, the arrival of his works in the space for which they were conceived over a period of months, during which their creation dominated his life, brings with it a huge sense of achievement. “Getting things out of the studio is great, very exciting,” he said. “It’s only when they are in the real world that they have a life of their own.”

The Indian-born sculptor, who has had major shows at the Royal Academy in London and the Turbine Hall in recent years, said he had been attracted to Berlin in part by its strong artistic community, which includes major British artist friends of his such as Douglas Gordon and Tacita Dean; they, in turn, have been drawn here by the strong encouragement given to the arts. He also found enticing the feeling that “it has a sort of lifestyle apart – it’s a city of the alternative”.

“I expect today London is much more the centre of cultural activity than Berlin is,” he said. “And yet, there is the sense that what happens here matters. It has a very interesting relationship between the local and the international.”

One of his own favourites among the new works – which he described as a “mad, crazy idea – is the deflated PVC whale, called Death of a Leviathan. It takes up an entire side of the building, and reinforces Kapoor’s sense of responsibility towards tackling major societal issues.

“It’s a big deflated skin, like a huge dead whale, a Hobbesian reference to the state being a kind of Leviathan beast that gives its control to the individual,” he said. “Death of the Leviathan may imply the kind of death or deflation of the state, this present condition we seem to be in all over the world where the individual has to take responsibility for the things that the state once took responsibility for.”

This article was written this week in the Guardian by Kate Connolly - 15 May 2013 here

My 8000 piece artwork: Behind the scenes

Nicola Anthony — Tue, 14 May 2013 12:47:55 +0000

I’ve been a bit quiet lately. When you see how many saga seeds I’ve been gathering from all over Singapore, to become part of a sculpture I am working on, you will understand why. When I tell you that I have been numbering them with white paint, by hand… you will wonder why as well.

I have been taking the ‘found object’ to a new level, and I will also be telling all the stories of the process of finding and collecting the individual seeds (all 8000 of them), through the artwork and via this blog. The sculpture Pass It On began with the simple idea of a sentence as a line with a beginning and end. The resulting sculpture comprises more than 8000 saga seeds, which the audience is invited to take and pass on.

All will become clear very soon. Join me at Displacements, opening in Singapore on 1st June 2013, to see the full sculpture.

Displacements, 13 Wilkie terrace, Mt Emily, Singapore. 1 June – 27 June 2013

The language code of art terminology – mumbojumbo and gobbledygook?

Nicola Anthony — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 05:03:13 +0000

These days we have to spend a lot of time defining ourselves. Facebook profiles, Linked In profiles, and for us artists – Artist Bios, Artist Statements, exhibition statements and catalogue texts. It gets to a point where I often feel a little schizophrenic with the number of versions of myself there are floating around out there. Not that they negate each other or are fictional, but in 150 words you have to give a rather edited and focused definition.

Sometimes through this process of condensing our paragraphs and words, we end up using many ‘tip of the iceberg’ terms – words which attempt to convey a whole concept or area of research. In this way, while trying to be more concise it is easy to actually become quite vague, incomprehensible and grandiose.

I have been thinking a lot about the often pretentious and coded nature of ‘art texts’ that you may read in gallery catalogues or blurbs. Not always – but often – this language is so full of buzzword terminology that it is hard to comprehend what, if anything, the author is trying to say. Coming from the art world myself as both an artist, a writer and avid reader of art texts, I brush up against these terminologies frequently and probably have a much firmer grasp on them than many. Yet I still find some gallery texts so initially un-crackable that I feel quite reluctant to try and de-code them: if they want to convey something genuinely interesting and intelligent, it should be possible to make it accessible to all, before feeling the need to delve into these art world encryptions. If I get frustrated by this, I can only imagine how some writings come across to those who are new to the world of creatives.

I try hard not to spiral into codified language and terminology in my own writing (oops maybe ‘codified’ is becoming one of those terms), but with many words being sucked in by creative minds and intellectual thinkers, and sent outwards again with new, deeper, layered meanings, it is difficult to write in the arts without coming across a little term-heavy. Another danger I perceive is that if I find the text too coded, it immediately appears to me that the writer is trying to overcompensate. This may or may not be true but it’s not a perception I want about my own artwork, which I feel should speak for itself.

Of course there is nothing wrong with assuming that the people reading already have this knowledge or would like to acquire it, but I think that there is a line which is crossed when every other word is a code-word which either opens up to the reader its world of meanings and subtexts, or closes off the text to the reader – writings become meaningless because the words used do not make sense unless you know the specific art world definitions for them.

I can see quite clearly how this all happens. When artists, historians, curators and the like explore a theory to great extent, it gains new meanings, subtexts and implications. From that point on, to anyone who knows, all of that thought is summed up in just one loaded term – like ‘transculturalism’, ‘critical nostalgia’, ‘prototypical society’, ‘gaze’, ‘collective subconscious’ - to pluck a few from art catalogues in my Studio today. What is slightly less acceptable is littering an article with words for simple things which make them sound like complex theories – ‘frontal plane’, ‘distanciation’, ’urban realities’, ’dimensional’ - I’ll be honest, sometimes I invent new terms and insert them into conversations just to see who pretends they understand and who asks me to define further… results are interesting!

I was just updating my artist facebook profile last week, when I realised I have also fallen victim a little to these terminologies. It is a symptom of trying to convey a lot through just a few words. I don’t think I am too guilty, but below is what I wrote in a recent artist statement, and my humanised translation of it. Which works better?

“…My artwork is inspired by deconstructing & reconstructing, mapping & memory, as well as the structure & understanding of language….”

This roughly translates as – I like to make big things out of small parts, I like to break down big things into their little components, I like maps, I have a bad memory and am therefore fascinated by it, I also like to research and make work about the history of a person or culture, I am intrigued by everything to do with language – talking, chatting, reading, writing, text, fonts, signs, symbols, grammar, communicating, miscommunicating, understanding and misunderstanding….

Enter the Text and Language Room: Tate Modern (nicolaanthony.wordpress.com)
Writing an artist statement? First ask yourself these four questions (guardian.co.uk)
My discussion with John Baldessari & Meg Cranston (nicolaanthony.wordpress.com)
18 ways to enhance your language skills (onlinecultus.com)

Viewing art virtually: Good, bad, ugly?

Nicola Anthony — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 03:11:40 +0000

I was just reading Google’s own blog about their Google Art Project, and was interested to read:

Gigapixel (an extremely high resolution painting viewer which allows viewers to zoom in to brushstroke level) “has shown that while nothing beats seeing a painting in real life, the ability to examine a work of art in this level of detail seems to be encouraging viewers to linger. One minute is the average time spent looking at any given painting on the Art Project website, compared to under 20 seconds (according to several studies) in a museum.”

What do you think? I just had a peek at Van Gogh’s Starry Night via Gigapixel here, and I can actually zoom in to see the canvas fibres, I know I would get told off by museum security for peering this closely in a gallery setting (and yes, I frequently do!) Is it a good thing that people are engaging with art online? Or a bad thing that it might stop them going to physical galleries? Would it stop you?

New exhibition: Displacements

Nicola Anthony — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 09:43:59 +0000

What happens when 16 contemporary artists are let loose in a building that is about to be bulldozed?

I am pleased to announce I will be exhibiting in Displacements, a group exhibition this June. The theme of ‘Displacements’, in this Singaporean context, has a lot to with the fast paced change in this South East Asian city which leaves us windswept, joyous, nostalgic or confused: Culture evolves like an organic being, heritage can slip into the background or be pulled through to the fore, traditions can become irrelevant or simply evaporate in a contemporary society, and a wave of nostalgia has overwhelmed many.

To conceptualise the exhibition, the artists are privileged to be working with 3 top curators who are acting as mentors to the process in this artist-led exhibition: Jason Wee of Grey Projects, Joleen Loh of ICAS, and Kamiliah Badhar of Galerie Steph. What sets this show apart is the unique opportunity for artists to work in an unconventional ‘gallery’ space: A 77 year-old family home which will soon make way for urban renewal, due to be removed at the end of June.

Detecting faint scents in the pantry, or tracing marks along the walls, it is a shame to think of the 77 years of family history woven into this house, but it is exciting to think of the future – for the family and for the space, or even metaphorically.

So how do I fit in here? I am relatively new to Singapore, even though I have always loved Asia and have Asian blood in my veins, it is my first time living in South East Asia, having been brought up and educated in England. And this, it seems, was the curatorial interest in me. I am the other side of the coin – I have displaced myself from London to Singapore, I am part of the new and the cultural changes in Singapore. I have sought out a new context: I left behind many memories and connections, but I certainly have stories to tell about the benefits of displacement and enforcing big changes on your life.

Having lived in both London and Singapore, I have learned what makes a city exciting. What moves it forward, challenges it to evolve, adapt, broaden, become more unique? It is the notion of change, moving forward, embracing the new. But there is always the other side: The more a place changes and evolves, the further away it becomes from its roots and heritage. This is the dichotomy of any city that wants to exist in modern time and not stand still. It seems impossible to have both, yet as humans we long for this – we don’t want to let go of what is precious to us, our pasts, families and roots. With Singapore in particular, the history of the city and the country is short (relative to London for example), yet the amount of change is the same, just squeezed into a much shorter period. This means that letting go of these roots is even harder, when the heritage is not so far removed from the present.

The pace and process of cultural evolution is complex, and too much to express through one artwork. My focus will be on simply making a work which shows change & movement – of individuals, of thoughts, of feelings, of time, of opinions, of connections. Through this, I hope to sculpturally make subtle references to the migration, merging and displacement of people, cultures, traditions, and nature. How do individuals fit into groups? How do we change and migrate? How does language change, evolve and reform? I’ll be updating you on my progress with this new installation, so please check back for updates (or click ‘follow’ at the top of this blog).

Displacements is an exhibition which asks the whole community to get involved through adding their own memories and words, to which the artists will respond. There wil be 5 rooms and 16 professional artists, including a community room which opens up for events throughout June. There is also a room reserved for works by visual arts students in the surrounding art schools, SOTA, LaSalle, and NAFA, to give young voices the opportunity to shape the present cultural identity of the area too.

2nd to 23rd June 2013 // 13 Wilkie Terrace // Singapore // www.13wilkieterrace.com/

Official Media Partner:

Event Partner:

Artistry cafe and gallery came onboard early as an Event Partner for DISPLACEMENTS. They will be programming a series of weekend evening events.

Artists: Yen Phang, Kanchana Gupta, Michelle Lim, Calvin Pang, Nicola Anthony, Mark Wong, Elizabeth Lim, Kenneth Lee, Matthew G Johnson, Celine Lim, Daryl Goh

Enter the Text and Language Room: Tate Modern

Nicola Anthony — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 04:03:25 +0000

Here is one room of inspiration I miss having on my doorstep: Text and Language Room, Tate Modern… Read what Tate says about this theme:

The terms ‘visual language’ or ‘vocabulary’ are often used to help describe the distinct characteristics of an artist’s practice. This analogy with words is apt within the context of modern and contemporary art, since the use of text, written or verbal, has been a significant feature of artists’ practices since the early twentieth century.

Cubist painters integrated letters and words, painted and found, into still lifes as they questioned representation on the two-dimensional surface. The marriage between poetry and the visual arts at the heart of Surrealism helped to articulate dream-inspired imagery and unlock the unconscious. Playful linguistic manipulations were central to the Dadaists, and Marcel Duchamp, often described as the father of Conceptual art, left an important legacy with his radical, often elaborate use of wordplay.

Richard Long
In the Cloud 1991
Framed text
image: 1055 x 1550 mm
ARTIST ROOMS Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008© Richard LongView the main page for this artwork

Such trends were partly the result of the growing cross-fertilisation between different disciplines. Just as music could be a metaphor for abstract painting, new forms developed in literature could be the model for extending visual boundaries. In the post-war period, artists expanded on the trajectory established by their predecessors and the blending and collision between art, music, literature, philosophy, politics and social agendas spread. Text has since been used in multiple ways: as narrative, as instruction, as statement, as sculpture, in literary and poetic forms, as recorded speech, and as the matter or object of the artwork itself.

Text was a crucial vehicle for artists challenging the notion that an artwork should consist of a physical object. With a shift towards ideas and systems that invited the viewer to engage with an intellectual concept, art became increasingly ephemeral and transient – famously described as the ‘dematerialisation of the art object’. Sol LeWitt coined the term ‘Conceptual art’ in 1967, and the text-based work of Joseph Kosuth, Lawrence Weiner, Art & Language, Hamish Fulton, Richard Long and others represented a fundamental strand in this movement.

Edward Ruscha
I PLEAD INSANITY BECAUSE I’M JUST CRAZY ABOUT THAT LITTLE GIRL 1976
Pastel on paper
support: 578 x 730 mm
ARTIST ROOMS Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008© Edward RuschaView the main page for this artwork

The printed word from mass media and advertising also increasingly found its way into imagery as artists drew on popular culture. Text was immediate, and billboards and signage exemplified the new commercial world. Artists have also looked at words as graphic signs in their own right. ‘The words have these abstract shapes, they live in a world of no size,’ noted Ed Ruscha in relation to his early single word-works which often employ visual alliteration. Ruscha’s later drawings of pithy phrases resonate with the work of Bruce Nauman whose colourful neon text-pieces are frequently self-referential and playful.

As well as the object of art, the role of the artist was also being transformed. Joseph Beuys’s role as teacher, activist and politician were all part of his position as an artist and he articulated his thinking through extensive lectures, using blackboards to illustrate his ideas The artist’s own words were now inextricably linked with the artwork itself.

Joseph Beuys
Honey is Flowing in All Directions 1976
Ink, pencil and ‘Free International University’ stamp on paper
support: 210 x 290 mm
ARTIST ROOMS Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008© DACS, 2009View the main page for this artwork

The political, philosophical and narrative possibilities of text appealed to younger generations of artists. Artists such as Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger have appropriated the message as their medium, placing provocative, often highly politicised statements in public places – projected onto buildings, or displayed on electronic signboards to investigate the phenomenon of mass communication and question the information we receive.

Artists have, of course, also looked to language for its poetic impact and literary resonances. Concrete poets, including Ian Hamilton Finlay, explored the formal qualities of language through its visual arrangement on a page. Finlay was also drawn to how language shapes the world in which we live and his sculptural works entwine references to nature, the Romantic sublime and history through a combination of deftly chosen objects, poems and sentences.

In all these cases and more the openness and ambiguity of language has offered artists the means to provoke and suggest, urge and instruct, compelling the viewer or rather, the reader to explore realms beyond the physical presence of an object in a gallery.

A bagful of cuttlebones, 4000 seeds, and a new exhibition…

Nicola Anthony — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 04:34:05 +0000

It’s been a while since my last post, in the time between now and then I have been scheming a brand new installation for an exhibition entitled ‘Displacements‘, I’ve taken a field trip to Malaysia where I drove through palm tree plantations, went diving with marine fish, and collected 2 sacks full of cuttlebones for a new sculpture, and this week I have started travelling all over Singapore in search of a certain type of seed. More updates soon on my upcoming exhibitions in May and June 2013, but for now, some recent photo documentation:

Beach bonfire in Malaysia

hillside near palm tree plantations, Malaysia

Cuttlebone with inspirational Texture, Malaysia

Art Science Museum, Singapore

Qing Ming festival of remembrance in Singapore

The anonymous words of Singapore / Sneak preview / Art

Nicola Anthony — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 09:25:29 +0000

Last week through a performance and a sculpture at The Substation, I asked visitors to write a sentence about the inside of their mind. Here are a few of the anonymous contributions, secrets and words from over 100 participants. (You can still add yours here)

The word collection:

I’m being pulled apart by everyone. I feel calm. I feel illusionary. I am so boliao. I believe life is beautiful. I feel like a foreigner perpetually even though I was raised here. I feel a happy moment in art. I feel burdened. I know she does not know how much I love her, no one does. I think my family is the best. I am happy shark fish. I am a person with olfactory fetishes. I bruised my muse. I am blue. I won’t tell my insides. I do handstands for you. I think time and water is the pursuit of the source of all beings. I think it’s life, it;’s love, it’s a nice arm of thoughts. I know this is without meaning. I am an artist. I am glad they make Singapore their home. I feel inspired. I like words and letters. I feel my body growing. I think visual. I feel utterly pretentious. I feel loquacious and delicious. I am hungry. I feel blurry sometimes. I feel sorry but in love. I am still nascent. I say aim for the sky. I personify me. I notice my tummy feels full of bubbles. I geek therefore I am. I think a lot. I sound like ghost bird one. I feel happy. I am faultless and you are in trouble. I feel. I sense my mind is a bubble, ever expanding until… I Love making notes of amazing words on my kindle. I feel hot and sweaty. I am George. I think that I am a bird flying across the word. I know arguing with a Fool makes two. I don’t give up with what history tells me. I am pixel perfect. I fell over. I feel nothing, seriously nothing. I am not hungry. I am an apple. I would never pangseh you. I’m lonely. I feel blessed. I am cosmos. I think seriousness is overrated, chill! I feel positive and happy things will happen. I am a scientist. I ask you, Please be Human. I wonder why. I am damn shiok. I feel upside down. I have ivory wings. I ask do you think Singapore is ‘real’? I say try living here as a ‘commoner’. I am a dude from SG. I love you so much it hurts. I am hot in Singapore. I see life just got a little harder. I am so proud of you. I meet you very soon so you can put a face on my name. Aku tidak menyerah pada sejarah. I think Justin Bieber gay lah. I want to be happy. I get increasingly kancheong. I am a plate of noodle. I am so scared sometimes, of the future. I need to make better art. I am curious. I feel like the ‘questions’ girl. I am old enough to bleed, I am old enough to breed, I am old enough to crack a brick in your teeth while you sleep. I want life and possibilities. I think she got her dessert. I hope this is a dream worth living for. I feel thrilled and sexy. I say ‘styrke til det du vil’. I eat. I shop. I feel creative and wonderful. I think honey-glazed chicken tastes suspiciously like Teriyaki. I think it’s finally starting to sink in. I feel without meaning. I am God. I am a piece of paper. I am driven to also inspire others. I say fly. I am a 5 yr old I like to paint and draw. I hope. I meet you there directly. I want us all to fit. I think heaven is filled with animals. I am an analyst. I think in colour. I am never more than 5 steps from a piece of fried chicken. I wonder why you so bias?! I am grateful for love, passion, friendship, family and the universe. I believe rain, hope and destiny are the pillars of human existence. I wonder how long can x do this? I know X waits for all the sums to be figured out and answers to come, in their own accord. I am in limbo. I am in a rut. I live with thousands of people in a huge city and can end up not speaking to anyone for an entire day. I am sorry Mum. I am Subject. I know Auguste defecated on my Buddha. I think persimmons are confusing. I saw he spat inside my heart. I believe there is a guru in the fens. I have to help you. I see change all around. I spotted vandalism comes onto the lion’s head. I am a danger to ducks. I like non-existence more than existence. I think trees are far more beautiful than humans – unfortunately, I am human. I like space. I see constellations. I am a representative. I count my blessings. I have friends in the world. I never thought I would be here. I see incredible love and invcredible hate. I am so sweet. I think everything points to you. I smell your skin. I breakfast on prata. I see anger. I have bifocal eyes. I don’t give it back. I have a one track mind. I know it happens and it’s part of the process. I barter with so many folks.

Get involved and anonymously add your own words to the collection here or by commenting on this post.

Check out an article about the show in Artitute Magazine here.

See the whole word collection here, including words from some of the previous performances and sculptures in London and LA.

photo by Karen Mitchell