the significances of white ceramic tiles
As stated in the article notes on the production of the assemblages, the elements of the assemblages (the objects and images) are laden with references for me, and signify thoughts, feelings, processes, memories etc. White tiles, for example, have featured in my artwork since I started my art degree in 1989 and trigger a number of particularly powerful references for me:
- hospitals - notions of sterile clinical coldness, sickness and disease, the smell of disinfectant, isolation, blood, life. (red blood on white tiles is a particularly strong mental image for me, but one which I cannot recall having witnessed with any traumatic significance in my actual life).
- the bathroom at my childhood home - the only room is the house with a lock on the door, so giving rise to references about privacy and, by extrapolation, to feelings of comfort and security.
- toilets - particularly piss-stinking, dirty, vomit-splattered pub toilets whose walls are graffiti-ed with tales of sexual conquest, sexual invitation, violence and hatred. These combine with closely-connected references to drunkenness, drugs, women and sex.
The sheer number and complexity of signified meanings for me for an element such as a white tile, and the apparent contradiction between some of those meanings, fascinates me and increases its power as an element. While all these three subsets of references are inherent (for me) in white tiles, the context and juxtaposition of other elements may highlight one subset above the others, or, by combining the tiles with a seemingly unrelated element, produce a new set of meanings in the "space" between them (not the physical space, but the narrative space - the space "between the lines" that you can choose to read).
For instance in the untitled 2003 assemblage (right), combining white tiles with police cordon tape produces associations of violence (which is made definite by the primary image), and particularly some notion of sexual violence.
The tiles initially combine two of the three of the subsets of references - the hospital references to blood and the toilet references to violence and sex - and so produce further references and meanings - the "clinical" reference is activated by the juxtaposition of the tiles and the police cordon tape (provoking references to American cop dramas - both the cordoned-off crime scene and the frequent visits of their characters to the hospital-like post-mortem rooms).
At the same time, the white tiles are dirty and stained, more like the tiles of the aforementioned toilet in a bar. Has the act of violence taken place in such a place - is that the area which has been cordoned off? Or is the crime scene a dirty bathroom in a run-down flat or house - the only room with a lock - a "safe room" sought as refuge from the perpetrator of violence?
In addition to these personal references, there are more wider cultural references. In T.S. Eliot's 1920 poem "Sweeney Erect" (one of a series of poems that Eliot wrote about the infamous Sweeney Todd murders) lines 29-33 read:
Tests the razor on his leg
Waiting until the shriek subsides,
The epileptic on the bed
Curves backward, clutching at her sides.
While there are no actual references to white ceramic tiles, their presence is almost inferred by the setting. This is further enhanced for me by the referencing of Eliot's lines in the Sisters of Mercy song "Valentine" on the 1983 "Reptile House" EP (a long time personal favourite), which starts:
The razor bites and the shriek subsides
He arches clutching at his sides
Across the floor, across the tiles
The man is dead and the razor smiles
A shiny love song, a quick incision
Cut him down on television
As well as including a definite mention of the inferred tiles, this latter quote adds additional layers to the reference.
The link between bathrooms and violence/death is noted in an article on forensic science:
If you think back to the 1960s, during the era of heavy drug use, there were a number of deaths by drug overdose that occurred in a bathroom. A person would shoot up and then die of an overdose. There were recorded cases of people dead, sitting on the water closet, slumped over against the wall. Many cases found the victim lying alongside the water closet, dead. Some very old cases were recorded of drunks falling and hitting their head on the vitreous china bowl, and found lying dead beside the water closet.
Certainly this strengthens the connection between white tiles and drugs (and brings up the question of why people tend to go to the bathroom to take drugs at a party or a bar - usually privacy). The slang for heroin - "china white" - also seems related to this (especially considering the mental relationship between bone china and ceramic tiles).