It was the sun and the contagious optimism of her cousin Carol’s wedding in Perth that had Trudy packing up her family’s life and moving 9,000 miles to Australia. This is where Jayne grew up. Her pale skin, permanently sticky from a film of sun-block was a constant reminder of her birthplace. In her 20s she returned to England and, after an abortive first degree, began training as a hairdresser. While she was studying her grandmother died. After the funeral her Aunt Christine sifted through Eileen’s house and its contents, she found some scissors. Jayne’s grandmother had also been a hairdresser. In the late 40s Eileen had offered ‘haircuts at home’. She’d cycle to her clients and cut hair in their kitchens and front rooms. She was so successful that the only way to stop the phone ringing was to get rid of it. Four years ago Jayne started her own business, her grandmother’s scissors are mounted on the wall of her South London salon.
06 Jan 2013
Sebastian bought this for his dad. It was designed by Norie Matsumoto as ‘an object for 2020’. Anyone who still uses a pencil in 2020 will be aware of it as anachronistic. Sharpening with this is almost ritualistic – tactile and deliberate, the sharp blade, the woody smell of curled shavings collected in the skeletal ball. The method of production is in stark contrast, it uses the technology of laser sintering. Bronze powder is fused and printed into a three-dimensional shape by lasers.
30 Dec 2012
For 50p it would do the job. Jonnie bought this belt from a charity shop in Edinburgh. As a fifteen year old he wore it with turned-up jeans, steel toe-cap DMs and a cut-off raincoat. It saw him through art college, across South America, he wore it for every job, girlfriend and club night that came and went. After the best part of twenty five years it is perfectly Jonnie shaped, even taken off at night and flung on the floor it forms his shape. And in spite of the length of time that he’s had it Jonnie has never obsessed over the belt. He has never worn it for luck or panicked about losing it. This year saw a big anniversary of Scratch, the hip-hop club that Jonnie co-founded. He’d been working 36 hour stints to finish both his freelance work and produce the videos, slide shows and art for the exhibition Scratch Expo 17. With half an hour to go, no sleep, an anxious curator pacing behind him, laptops that wouldn’t synch, Jonnie bent over to fix the projector and his belt broke.
23 Dec 2012
Commet had a large litter, seven in all. Rufo named his puppy Alfred. It was a rough period in Rufo’s life and Alfred was a new and entirely benign presence – friendly, energetic and curious. Walks were always at a funny staccato pace as Alfred ran full tilt until they were stopped by another admiring dog walker. Rufo met Luba in Hyde Park when Alfred was two. Luba had a Jack Russell bitch, the two dogs disappeared while their owners talked and exchanged numbers. The dogs were clearly attracted to each other. Just weeks later Alfred was out walking, he spotted some food in the road, ran out and was hit by a car. Rufo was devastated. At the height of his grief Luba called, she had a day old litter of Jack Russell puppies. Alfred was the father. Rufo now has Albert, Alfred’s son. Eight years after Alfred’s death Rufo commissioned Rachel Ball to make this model. The likeness of both Albert and the model to Alfred is uncanny.
16 Dec 2012
Anthea was an ‘airhostess’ long before planes were served by cabin crew or flight attendants. Her husband was kept a secret, airhostesses were not allowed to be married. More pressing still was the need to hide her pregnancy. She’d begun work for British United Airways in 1961. BUA held the UK military contract transporting troops to old Rhodesia, Kenya and Uganda during their nascent independence. Hers was a charmed life with time to feel the romance of travel. She remembers the elegance of the ‘Whispering Giant’ – the ‘Britannia’ turboprop she flew in, remembers eating her first avocado pear, spending each night in a new club, seeing bananas growing wild. She drove south east from Nairobi to the coast seeing elephants for the first time. She swam in the coral reefs and ate Mombasa curries. Elephants have come to symbolise this idyllic period. This elephant was a present from her daughter Emma, the daughter who flew the skies with her mother for the five months that Anthea had to hide her pregnancy.
09 Dec 2012
Jamie’s mother trained as a nurse and then a midwife. In another era she might have been a doctor. Women of her generation didn’t work after they had children so reluctantly she gave up her job. In 1999 she died in Langholm, a small Scottish town divided in two by the River Esk and hemmed in by four hills. After her death Jamie, her son, travelled to Bali, as far as he could from the rain, the slate and the grey stone of his home country. Following the sadness of the funeral Bali was a tonic, as warm and exotic as Dumfriesshire was cold and familiar. Two weeks later Jamie and his wife Jane were travelling through Ubud on their way to the airport. On impulse they pulled into a yard selling statues of deities, the sort ubiquitous across Bali. He’d previously been drawn to Ganesh, the elephant headed god. They bought two and had them packed and shipped to the UK. Months later a crate arrived at their London home. The elephants were in pieces. Jamie slowly put them back together. When he’d bought the pair, he’d not known that Ganesh was the god of wisdom or, more aptly, that he was the god of new beginnings.
02 Dec 2012
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