Dishwater and No Images
Peak Gallery, London 2020
Dishwater And No Images embodies the visible invisible body of Black women that is a key focus of Dillon’s practice. All the pieces are linked to this in some way. They are also an escape for Black women, herself included, as they don’t feature our bodies.
A reflection and an escapism.
The sculpture, ‘Atlas’ Duppeee Whoopeee Seat: women should stop cleaning faeces, everyone should clean faeces’, references how the white male neoliberal position is bolstered by the instrumentalized support of the Black woman. A brown balloon embodies the backs of Black women. ‘The performing male neoliberal body has another kind of “phantom” [duppy] body that enables his limitless performance’, states Françoise Vergès. The duppy bodies of Black women enable the Capitalocene whilst simultaneously being treated as a joke - a whoopee cushion in society. These women have to self inflate themselves, self treat, self care... and make time for the care and treatment of others. A suspension is held between the hole in the commode and the commonality of the cleaning and healthcare systems relying on the visible invisibility of Black and brown women.
There’s nothing great about Britain. It has a muddied past of a blood stained future. Brown, a thematic colour for Dillon, is expressed in ‘These words took years to arrive *pause* leaking fortified enclaves’, with the paint reacting and presenting like decay or erosion of the map of GB. An erosion of patriarchy that is heavily ingrained in our psyche. The piece evokes the feeling of the WW1 & WW2 posters used as propaganda. Posters were calling with false pretence the ‘services’ of the colonies arriving to GB by boat, in a wind rush.
Noticeboards are heavily relied upon and heavily ignored within institutions - much like the Black body. The ‘map’ is presented on the noticeboard evocative of the institutions that are cleaned and supported by numerous Black bodies, yet are with time decaying with the radical thinking and futures that exist for Blackness.
An amorphous brown figure rests in the deep midnight sky. A Black angel employs the brown body. Supported by a cloud of dreams that swells with daemons and stars to be deciphered by the viewer. At the bottom you find a glass of milk. Reminiscent of the glass you drink to help you go to sleep or leave out for visiting mythical creatures, like angels, to drink on their visit. This glass embodies the glass half full or half empty saying, yet here, it is over half full. The cup whiteness gets to devour is over half full, always. Overfull. Overflowing with supported calciums. This sits in the pink udder of the cow cloud (see its eye slit on the top right) reminiscent of the Studio Ghibli creatures Dillon was watching during a marathon viewing in quarantine whilst her friend also watched on FT. The BLM uprising that encapsulated quarantine proceeded to give her nightmares. “I woke from a nightmare one day and the only thing I could do in my journal was sketch parts of what now makes up this painting, ‘UdderAngel’.”
A means of treatment for visible invisible viral migrations of destruction.
- RD
These words took years to arrive *pause* leaking fortified enclaves, 2020
Ink and acrylic paint on paper mounted onto felt noticeboard, 60 x 90 cm
Ink and acrylic paint on paper mounted onto felt noticeboard, 60 x 90 cm
Atlas’ Duppeee Whoopeee Seat: women should stop cleaning faeces, everyone should clean faeces, 2020
balloon, disinfectant, bodyoils and found object, 98 x 54 x 64 cm
balloon, disinfectant, bodyoils and found object, 98 x 54 x 64 cm
Atlas’ Duppeee Whoopeee Seat...(detail), 2020
Atlas’ Duppeee Whoopeee Seat...(detail), 2020
UdderAngel, 2020
Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 150 cm
Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 150 cm
Photography: Dean Hoy