Great Expectations

"It is the ghost of a wedding cake...

...and I am the ghost of a bride...

Time stands still and yet everything turns to dust..."

No Man's Land

Must-see in Jersey at the moment is Mishka Henner's exhibition No Man's Land at Jersey Arts Centre until 10 December, part of this year's excellent Jersey Amnesty International Human Rights Festival. 

At the exhibition preview someone said that this was their favourite photograph, because the woman looks like a ghost in the landscape. 

There is something other-worldly about many of the images - women, alone or in pairs, at roadsides in Spain and Italy, probably sex workers.  This is partly because they have been captured from Google Street View, which blurs features to preserve anonymity, unintentionally creating a poignancy. 

Mishka's framing of the shots emphasizes the disparity between the women (brightly and occasionally scantily dressed) and the sometimes barren, sometimes lush roadside locations.  The women's presence is at times bold, plying for trade seated on plastic chairs, at times discreet, like icons at roadside religious shrines.

I'm a bit of a Google Earth obsessive myself so I love the layering of this work, how it explores our digital world and its liminal places, and also the stories it unearths, what it says about exploitation, surveillance and voyeurism, anonymity and transience.

Missing of course are the men, the punters and pimps, ironically alluded to in the title...

This Is How Ghosts Are Made

Looking forward to This Is How Ghosts Are Made - the new EP by The Glass Child, released 5 December.

http://theglasschild.bandcamp.com/album/deluxe-box-this-is-how-ghosts-are-made-bonus-ep-songs-of-an-insomiac-the-glass-child-diary

Love this nocturnal, ghostly Hypnic Jerk:





'Tell me are you see-through?

This ghost you’re turning into

I shut my eyes, and you’re no longer here...'

Jersey Girl

                                                               falling

                                                                        falling

                                                        it's harder than it looks

                                                            snapshot   kamikaze

                                                                        no net    free fall

                                                                    skinny dipping

                                                                dead drop

                                                                   plunge dive

                                                                         tumbling

                                                          night ride into blue

      

 

                                                      plucked bird

                                                                 curled light

                                                            mute

                                                                   wind hung

                                                             the naked toe glide

                                                     this is how love looks

                                                            a leap of grace

                                                beauty from the air

                                                       falling

                                                              falling



 

ghost bikes

painted white

locked near a crash site

ghost bikes

are memorials

    

to cyclists who have died or been hit

in the streets

the first ghost bikes were created in St Louis, Missouri in 2003

there are currently over 450

that have appeared

in over 150 locations

worldwide...

duck weather

Espaliered Woman

               legs crossed

         bad housewife

                           crucified to damp stone

here I stand

                                       trained & trimmed

                          hair long pecked away by crows

                      buds rubbed smooth

                        scarified carapace of skin

                            squab & sweet

                    there's a gorgeous letting go

in splitting   sloughing

tasting rain

         at night

                                                 dreaming I can take off

                                        fly blind over the estate houses

                              your leaden angel