performance/sculpture

things break down

If Mothers

mother others,

who mothers

mothers?

(life in reverse)

performance and sculpture; Rachel Fallon at the invitation of Aine Phillips for Buttered Up at Mart Gallery, Dublin 06/03/2020

I enter the space, hair plaited tightly and bound, carrying a large bag over my shoulder and a bucket full of vinegar.

A chair is set on the diagonal near the wall and I place my bag and bucket near it. From my bag I take an Apron, the altered ego, made from an evening dress, which itself was made and worn by my mother before she married and had children. I put it on.

The apron has a pocket and from the pocket I take a hammer and a nail. I measure the wall as to the approximate height of my mother and whack the nail in.

From my bag I start to pull lengths of wire wool. I smooth them and tease them out and then dip them in the bucket of vinegar, lifting and dipping and squeezing like washing, like milking a cow. I fashion a ball like knot the size of my own head and hang it on the nail, draping another layer of washed wire wool over it. I slowly tease it into strands adding more wire wool and I slowly begin to plait, longer and longer, stopping only to rinse a new length and add it. I plait and plait until I can plait no more, there is nothing left to plait. The wire wool begins to turn slowly from silver grey, my mothers hair colour to reddish brown, mine.

I finish the coil, wipe my stained hands on the apron and begin to unbind my own hair. I undo all the plaits and untangle it until it is a mass of frizz. I nail two nails into the wall at the height of my own shoulders. I take off my apron and hang it on them. I pick up my bag and my bucket and leave.

In the next weeks, the coil of ‘hair’ will slowly disintegrate into small particles of metal rust.