THIS FATAL SUBJECT: BLOG

This week, Wed 20th May, I’m featured on Griff Rhys Jones’ poetry documentary, WHY POETRY MATTERS, on BBC2, 9pm. My newest random haiku (see Quantum Sheep, on my website http://www.valerielaws.co.uk) is activated on inflated beach balls in Hackney Lido.  Should be fun! It certainly was fun making it though blowing up the balls took ages…

We’ve just found out our exhibition at Old Operating Theatre Museum, London, is a Guardian Art Critic Pick of the Week for this current week. This is great news, and explains why we’ve been getting reports of lots of people visiting the exhibition since our fab private view, which in itself was attended by 106 people. This is very encouraging, as it backs up our conviction that our project, This Fatal Subject, is very much one that the public responds to, both the subject matter and the creative work. We hope this interest continues, for Phase Two’s full size touring exhibition and other outcomes.

Saturday's Guardian, featuring our show as a Pick of the Week.

Just to report on our Exhibition Opening/Private View at Old Operating Theatre Museum, London, on 27th January 09. The atmospheric venue looked amazing, and was a great setting for our This Fatal Subject work to celebrate the end of Phase One (R&D). The event was a huge success – over 100 people came, and we had some great responses to the work. Sue’s films and projections of poetry and artwork looked terrific on the curved wall of the corridor, some wonderful visuals in her film featuring near death experiences, and the animation of my kinetic ‘dying’ poetry on Apoptosis was fab too. Sue had a painting on display, and I had print outs of 8 poems with background textures by Sue. I was very pleased (and relieved) that visitors accepted the poems as exhibits and responded to them as such. I performed a couple of poems too. Eleanor’s figure appeared for the first time in his latex incarnation, with implanted animatronic mechanism speaking  a death speech I wrote for him.  The show is on until Feb 27th, so if you missed the private view, do go along and see it. There are lots of fascinating exhibits belonging to the museum, specimens, surgical tools, all in a wonderful garret with beams and dark corners and old wood, and the operating theatre itself with tiered standing areas with railings to lean on, like the Leazes end at the Toon used to have, no doubt to view even bloodier sights than ever seen at St James Park! So thank you to all at Old Operating Theatre, and to all who came to drink blood red wine and see and hear our work.

Previous post is an invite to the opening of our exhibition. Our last Phase One show was in the Gordon Museum of Pathology where we have our residencies. This one is in the atmospheric surroundings of the Old Operating Theatre Museum, from the good old days before anaesthetics, when our ancestors gritted their teeth during amputations and died of shock and infection. That’s character building! Anyway, this new show is open to the public, and contains projected art and poetry, wax sculpture which is planned to speak poetry on its deathbed, and a film, prototype version, which marks a collaboration between me and Susan. She is making an animated film, with her fabulous visuals, and soundtrack, featuring my kinetic poetry sequence on apoptosis. the poetry undergoes cell death to change meaning.  You can see the prototype version at the show.