
Ethel Grimbaldeston and She speaks to me at night (2008)
Stop motion animation made on my parents’ kitchen table in Lancashire and on the floor of an artist’s clapboard house in Los Angeles.
Investigating the life of things across space and time
The old fart in Room 17 is becoming a problem. He does it even when his wife’s on the terrace, sweating, counting her rosaries. Clack-clack. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Ah, Mamma, what would you say if you could see me now? Four stringy children and a fat pig of a husband who belches triumphantly after every meal and snores all night. Clack-clack-clack.
It’s usually as I’m making the beds and she’s looking out to sea. Hospital corners. Pontus’s school project is to learn of other cultures so we fold towels into swans like his teacher says the Japanese do. Except in Room 17 I just do triangles – the swans take too long.
I smell his oiliness behind me and freeze. I am a sparrow, still and trembling. His saggy chicken arms claw at my apron, his toothless mouth waggles its wormy tongue at me. Clack. Blessed are thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus.
I dart away, holding the sheets like a shield. His eyes are full of water, tears spilling over the loose red rims, filling the wrinkles in his cheeks, dripping off his chin onto the floor tiles. Salt water, inside and out. Surrounding us. Swimming in it. Clack. Holy Mary Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Drowning.
Amen.
Stop motion animation made on my parents’ kitchen table in Lancashire and on the floor of an artist’s clapboard house in Los Angeles.
Uganda is hot and dark. Late into the December night we sit on planks in the back of a stripped out land rover. We are driven faster than our bodies would like, the speed rattling my bones, teeth, brain, recording equipment.
Falling is an uncontrollable action. When we fall (over, apart, in love, asleep) we become vulnerable; quarry. Caught between spaces this figure falls headfirst and downwards.
Epic story show of dark matter, bodies circling, blind boxing, fortune seekers, meteorite impacts, doomed romance, interstellar collisions, moon mining, promises given.
Sarah Gillett is an artist and writer from Lancashire, UK.
She currently lives in London.