...What you held in your hand,/ what you counted and carefully saved,/ all this must go so you know/ how desolate the landscape can be...

-Naomi Shihab Nye

 

The nine days are a period of grieving in mourning as part of the Jewish lunar calendar each summer. Marking the destruction of the temple, they are a time for mourning and introspection. The work uses these days as a jumping off point to mark other kinds of mourning and periods of destruction. 

 

Grief washes over us like waves. It drains us, wipes us clean, returning to us and us to, ebbing, flowing. 

 

These days are 9, they are time spent in Penryn, printing daily the sounds of the heart and rustlings of the body. Heartbreak. Soulbreak. Bodybreak. Earthbreak. Wavebreak. 

 

These days there is grief, for death, for climate destruction, impending extinction of our species, our beautiful places, separateness from loved ones, oppression, capitalism, desecration. We can hold it, or we can release it back, allowing it to change us and to flow through us. Deep in the layers, deep in the water, a long way in and a long way through. Held in our hands. Carefully saved.

 

The exhibition of large-scale prints and objects constituted a temple of sorts, a ritual space, created over nine days in residency at the Fish Factory in Penryn, Cornwall. The artist invites viewers to add their own responses in the guestbook, creating a memorial to that which has been lost and proposing an emergence into new landscapes.