Author Archives: The Door Bolt

Flash 500 launch, Whitechapel Gallery

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I am very pleased to announce that I have been commissioned to produce a written piece for Akerman Daly’s latest project Flash 500. If you wish to receive this and all 32 commissions direct to your inbox, sign up here for free: http://akermandaly.com/flash500/subscribe/. Posters of the commissions will also be displayed in various galleries and art venues in London.
I will be reading my piece alongside some of the other artists at the Flash 500 launch events on Saturday 14 September at Whitechapel Gallery, London. The events are free to attend, but booking is required as spaces are limited. Click here to book.
F500 Master poster_FINAL_19 August 2013

Flash 500, Akerman Daly

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I am very pleased to have been commissioned to write a piece for Akerman Daly‘s latest project, Flash 500. 

Flash 500 is being published online, and you can sign up to receive all 30 commissioned pieces direct to your inbox. Click here for the press release and for instructions on how to sign up.

The launch event will take place mid-September, at the London Artist’s Book Fair, Whitechapel Gallery. Further details to follow.

Lazy eyes

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I like to think I work hard. I work full-time in a job which mainly involves standing and/or sitting around. And then I come home and make my creative stuff, which mainly involves standing and/or sitting around and/or typing. Like this blog post, for example.

It dawned on me today just how lazy one can be – and that’s the Royal ‘One’ – when I noticed my glasses were getting mucky and decided to do the only elegant and dignified thing a lady can do in such a situation and ceremoniously wiped-them-on-my-t-shirt-a-bit. Not that this was the lazy thing. What this action triggered in my memory was how I came to be wearing glasses today. I don’t mean short-sightedness, which is what I have had since I was eight years old, I mean why I wore glasses today and not contact lenses, as per.

LAZINESS.

I usually wear contact lenses every day and have done since I was sixteen. There are 2 main reasons for this. 1) I genuinely find glasses a bit annoying to wear. It’s as though my nose and ears are now not only responsible for smell, taste, hearing and balance, but also making sure some plastic stuff stays on my face. 2) When I was ten, during a football match, someone blasted the ball into my tiny child face (with their foot. I realise ‘blast’ taken literally suggests the – in this case, unreasonable – use of explosives) and my glasses shattered into a thousand (four or five) pieces. And it hurt. Then, for the last three years the reason is slightly different. I fell asleep in my glasses one too many times and the snapped at the bridge. This is when the Blu-Tack was applied and I did not leave the house wearing glasses after this time.

The day I finally went to the optician to get a new pair, I was so embarrassed about my DIY handicraft that I actually walked through the streets of Croydon without any optical assistance, knowing only that the optician would probably be the big black blob after the big beige blog that is Centrale Shopping Centre.

I went in and was guided to the optician.

“I’ve seen many things in my time [in my profession as an optician],” she said,  but I’ve never seen someone hold their glasses together with Blu-Tack.”

There was an awkward pause, before she added

“Sellotape, yes. But not Blu-Tac”

Then she fired tiny puffs of air into my pupils (optic, not academic) and made me stare at a tiny picture of a cottage through something resembling a telescope. I assume this was some kind of punishment and took it as such.

But I got some new glasses and now, my life has changed for the lazier. If I’m feeling in the slightest bit sleepy or running the tiniest bit late, the glasses go on and my contact lenses stay at home, all alone, ‘cleansing’ in separate cells, in a kind of saline-based suspended animation.

I’m even too lazy to finish this bl