BACK TO THE SPACESHIP, 2026

I don’t usually like going back to my old artworks. They end up in pieces, recycled, binned, because from trash they were born, and to trash they will return. Maybe I’ll keep a few scavenged scraps in a box I never open, a few photos on my phone I never look at again.

Three and a half years later, ‘Destination Venus, Spaceship Un-Manned’ has been haunting me. I can see her through new, sharper eyes. She’s still the only artwork I’ve ever put in a gallery: a bloody red scream against the white walls and echoing silence.

Plates were smashed. Cans were crushed. Biscuit crumbs were squished into the floor under the stamp of heavy boots.

‘It’s so angry’. ‘It’s just a load of vaginas’.

I’ll take the compliments.

But Destination Venus was also a place of refuge. I pulled so much of it right from the old anxiety-cave flat: blankets, cushions, dirty laundry. I stayed there late in those last days before the deadline: dizzy, too warm, whole nerve system on fire. Breathing in the solvent-paint and sticky sweet spilled-pop smell, I tried to imagine a Venus where this anger didn’t boil silently in every cell of my body.

‘Destination Venus, Spaceship Un-Manned’ was a spaceship. A transition point. And now, I guess, it’s landed.

Can you feel something shifting?

Blossoming up from the scorched earth,

out from the cracked concrete,

their heads not petals, but teeth.

Tongues are sharpening.

The FLUIDS of angry wombs have hit the boiling point.

Welcome To New Venus. We are made from the shattered stars