eugenia bleach (detail)
![]()
202our
our lot was an exhibition held by Laura Ní Fhlaibhín, Hannah Walton and myself in Bermondsey in December 2022.
The exhibition was a direct response to the site (a passageway near our studios that ran underneath railway arches, and near a large waste management facility, car repair shops, etc…) being classified as an underused industrial area that had been earmarked for redevelopment – this being part of a wider development attitude in London where ‘unused’ space cannot be allowed to exist.
I created cast ‘Sodium Lauryl Sulphate (SLS)-free’ soap blocks containing carved excerpts from a poem in the novel The Aosawa Murders by Riku Onda:
“Eugenia, my Eugenia. I journeyed alone all this time
That I might meet you again.
And I tell you this:
That days of shivering in a long-ago dawn
Also end today.
From here on we will be together, forever.
The song that rises to my lips,
The insects of the woods crushed beneath my shoes in the morning,
And this tiny heart of mine ceaselessly pumping blood,
All this, I offer to you.”
The embedded broken-up poem soap blocks are exposed to the elements on the 20 metres wire mesh fence - the text and sculptures melt and disappear with the rain.
The poem in the novel was written by one character to another, both responsible for the murder - by poisoning - of seventeen people. This is revealed in the novel through testimonies by different voices.
The poisoning in the novel is seen as a solution, a benevolent act.
photos (top left and top right) by Ksenia Burnasheva
photo (bottom) by John Reardon
photo
202our our lot was an exhibition held by Laura Ní Fhlaibhín, Hannah Walton and myself in Bermondsey in December 2022.
The exhibition was a direct response to the site (a passageway near our studios that ran underneath railway arches, and near a large waste management facility, car repair shops, etc…) being classified as an underused industrial area that had been earmarked for redevelopment – this being part of a wider development attitude in London where ‘unused’ space cannot be allowed to exist.
I created cast ‘Sodium Lauryl Sulphate (SLS)-free’ soap blocks containing carved excerpts from a poem in the novel The Aosawa Murders by Riku Onda:
“Eugenia, my Eugenia. I journeyed alone all this time
That I might meet you again.
And I tell you this:
That days of shivering in a long-ago dawn
Also end today.
From here on we will be together, forever.
The song that rises to my lips,
The insects of the woods crushed beneath my shoes in the morning,
And this tiny heart of mine ceaselessly pumping blood,
All this, I offer to you.”
The embedded broken-up poem soap blocks are exposed to the elements on the 20 metres wire mesh fence - the text and sculptures melt and disappear with the rain.
The poem in the novel was written by one character to another, both responsible for the murder - by poisoning - of seventeen people. This is revealed in the novel through testimonies by different voices.
The poisoning in the novel is seen as a solution, a benevolent act.
photos (top left and top right) by Ksenia Burnasheva
photo (bottom) by John Reardon
photo