A Life's Work (2015)
“Naked, they have a narrative quality, like cave paintings; a quality muted by clothes and context, a quality seen only here, in this damp, municipal place where we are grouped anonymously, by gender. Though I too have the body of a woman, the sight still briefly arouses in me a child’s fear, a mixture of revulsion and awe for these breasts and bellies and hips, this unidealised, primitive flesh which, forgetful here of its allure, seems composed purely of reproductive purpose. The hairdryers sing, the locker doors bang open and shut, the tiled floor of the shower room runs with unguents and foam. Veined, muscled legs stalk to and fro; bare arms untangle matted hair and towel skin that quivers with exertion. Breasts and bellies and hips, customised with moles and scars, with skin smocked or smooth, engraved like runes or blank as new-sculpted marble: declarative and material, they exist as objects, communicating by form alone. Sometimes there are children in the changing rooms and I se...e them stare in the way I used to stare, and half want to still: in illicit wonder and terror at the suggestiveness of the adult physiognomy, its frank protrusions and fur and patina of age or experience bespeaking untold mysteries of pleasure and pain, of copulation, gestation and birth.MoreLess
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