I and my fellow artist, Nimmi Naidoo, showed an installation in central Oxford for Oxfordshire Artweeks which we had created as a tribute to all the many kinds of keyworkers who have died during this pandemic.
The installation, _hung_out_to_dry, is (so far) a set of 54 photographs of people who just turned up for work because they didn’t have a choice, being unable to do their jobs from home.
They kept this country going, and many of them died – with the massive ripple effects this caused within families and communities. All of our statistics on the numbers of deaths in specific occupations were from the Office of National Statistics for England and Wales.
We chalked the figures onto the pavement every day, sitting outside, and had wonderful conversations with folk who were passing by. One day, we read out this excerpt from a poem by Sheenagh Pugh:
Wher beth they, bifore us weren?
We’ve no cause to love change,
that’s the truth of it. Surely something
is lost; surely a body is
not just limbs, but their running lightness,
not eyes only, but what lit them,
and where does that go, Empedocles,
what becomes of it?The ball passes
from hand to hand, but it’s colours
fade in the sun: one day perhaps,
it drops in the grass, lies half hidden,
it’s purple weathered to grey.
and it may be a poem, so perfectit lives on the page or tongue
for long ages of men,
but it may be no more
than a neighbour’s good nature
a workman’s craft, a joker’s quick wit,
and these are soon gone
as the last man dies
who kept them in mind,
yet they were, as surely as cliff and leaf,
but where is the sand, the coal
that came of them?Is there a beach somewhere,
Unmapped, unvisited, whose sand
Was ground from the soft stone
Of all that has slipped from mind?
Could we run through our hands
The grains of a girl’s longing,
An artist’s gift, a paleolithic jest?Show me the sand, Empedocles,
Show me the sand
photo by Jill Green
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Forty-Three Newsletter • Number 506 • June 2021
Oxford Friends Meeting
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