TUB THUMP
This one comes with it’s own playlist.
This playlist is actually tunes I was listening to around early 2023, while making some other work and enjoying lots of winter baths. I’ve made videos and images in the bath for a few years. I find it a great place for thinking, for regulating emotions and cleaning up my act.
2019 I did a lot of swimming in the sea, which lockdowns made more tricky flying solo with a kid who didn’t like the water. I found replacing the cold water with hot was maybe a more gentle way of taking care of myself.
Some images from 2017 onwards…
I made a series of videos from the bath during 2023 for instagram but they’ve been lost to the ether (and got me shadow banned). Everything happens for a reason I guess…although they were just a bit cheeky and possibly a bit unhinged, it felt like a very direct way to process a lot of trauma from past relationships.
An abusive ex had been stalking me online and I’d finally started to process what he’d actually done and what I’d been through many years prior. It made me deeply fearful of all men for a period of time. Waking up to all the places where men had made me fearful or had acted without consent started to surface all at once. Making these videos and images felt like I was regaining myself from a safe place. Washing all those experiences off my memories.
I made some of these at the same time as working on a series of black and white 35mm nude self portraits, the whole process was quite ritualistic - from cosy bath to darkroom and then washing the film and prints in the same bathroom.
Images printed onto tracing paper for collage work.
collage notebook made from bath self portraits and that ridiculous letter we got from Downing Street during covid lockdowns about washing your hands.