Your touch is monstrous.

This series of works was made for a recent group show of Falmouth University staff and students at Grays Wharf gallery in Penryn, Cornwall. My response to the show’s theme of “monstrousness” reflects on the ecological crisis. A crisis so monstrous and overwhelming that it is hard to process. These works have been, in part, a way to process my grief and anger and deal with a sense of the monstrousness of touch. Mine. Ours. Yours.

The drawings, sculptures, and video performance use graphite and charcoal mixed with vaseline to become reminiscent of an oil slick; its thick, sticky, visceral matter squelching, slime-ing, and coating my hands, which in turn, indelibly mar every surface they touch. The impact of humankind on our environment is undoubtedly overwhelmingly negative. We have in the sense a kind of anti-midas where everything we are touching is decaying and dying. These works battle with a sense of disgust and horror at my own complicity in this process. The “your” in the title is deliberate. Both accusation and self-flagellation.

This is held in tension for me by the knowledge that the monstrous in literature and folklore is a productive force for transformation, empowerment, and growth. There is beauty and catharsis embedded in the monstrous. A delicacy and frailty. Dare I say it? Hope.