There was a murder.
There was little understanding.
The crimes escalated.
Enlightenment dawned.
The greed for bodies is now insatiable
A warning – be wary for your discarded childhood memories,
the token of love generously given yet discarded
Emotional and physical transgressions, dismemberment, disfigurement,
sexual-mutation, all perpetrated against the sacred, the innocent transitional object.
Oh what fun
What do you do with your once precious objects that you no longer wish to own? Do they head to EBay? Garage sales? Car boot sales? Or the charity shop?
These pre-loved extravaganzas are the perfect hunting ground for candidates to be Lovingly Murdered.
It takes a certain mood to be able to take a part a transitional object, and interestingly it is never easy. There have been a few survivors over the years that, ironically, now live in that limbo place of not wanted and unsure what to do with.
There is always a place where the soft toy is closed up by hand in the manufacturing process and this is where the first cut is made. This is always done with care. The toys usually spring open with ease and the filing removed. It is at this point, with the loss of three dimensionality, that the toy moves from object to material and becomes emotionally easy to work with.
As part of the process of making Lovingly Murdered there is always material left over; legs, arms, ears, eyes, stuffing, eyes etc and these leftovers have all been kept. It felt appropriate, that if a transitional object was going to destroyed then this was done emotionally ethically as possible by using all the body parts and that there was no waste. Some of this material is now making its way into other parts of the practice.
A lot of fun is had making Lovingly Murdered. There are laugh out loud moments and times of discomfort where societies’ boundaries have been closely nuzzled.
All pieces within this collection have been made with a lot of love and care, a collection that examines our emotional relationship with transitional objects through humour and exploration of taboo.