Can Gun, Abbey Scholar in Painting, speaks about the work he has produced during his residency at the BSR from September to December 2024, ahead of the Winter Open Studios.
Find a way home. Ancient short term memory. Do you sense what I say? Return to your sitting positions and listen. We are miles ahead and they chase us. My crew laughs. Young bold soldiers. Be brave clench fist’s. Be bad in good weather bureaucratic British bone diggers. We restart from zero. You once belonged in inaudible reminders. Sacred sedition sanctioned by sacrilegious smugglers. You will be our children’s servants. We came home. You treated us like animals. We were bored. Intimidating. We became the animals we were told we were. You are cat and dog herders.
Fishing in the bible black sea off the Jolly Roger, hooking crocodiles, TikTok killing on route to Europe. Dont make a big song and dance, never land on dry land. Find the facade with no navigation. Did not bring mygun. Come to destroy thee. We wont sneak in on a stallion.
You Dm pics of your carpe(t), asking if I am circumcised. There is a conspiracy against the manhood of our members. Put on your Trunks we’re going to the future. On their back’s in the backs of arctic’s. The boys have untied me but we keep the wax in our ears, inaudible reminders.
We have sailed through the snot green, scrotum tightening sea through generations. Cutting off our anchored definitions. Out of rhythm with bigger ships. We now head home to draw deadly lines in the cobbled sand. It wasn’t you; chair umpires, chief umpires, line umpires, but your complicit apathy, blinkered solipsism & racist racketeering that leaves you accused on the tennis court. Your homes are an effigy of your parents and grandparents. Meeting robbers, ghosts, old men etc. but never yourself.
Come on you pale, bored, privileged thieves.
Come on you fat, broken, moaning, slack jawed scrollers.
Come on you offended screw faced cowards.
Come on you alcoholic self betrayers, you inhuman tumble dried tumble weeds.
Come on you sore knee, sore back, sore winning whiners, you full bellied, full pocketed corpse dragging dragons.
Come on you judgemental heretic hypocrites, you small minded unkind arsonists.
Come on you french pressed, orange peeled spillages, you book shelved, high heeled, oat milk crumbs.
Come on you misguided, need gluing, game playing, nose turning, down talking, love chewing, mouth breathing, back stabbing, echo chambers.
Come on you nail biting, nothing saying, child killing, drink drowning, friend blinding, chain linking, breast stroking, puss pouting, washed up, worried, wallowing, withered, waylaying, wilted, wrinkled, wrestled, wayfaring waxer.
/ Uylsses Skinner
And on the violent silent ocean that settles bobbing eager minds, a vision appears at Skinner’s feet. A young boy unseen, singing sweetly in rhythm with the moon and stars, clambers up onto the side of the air filled liner, searching for friendly fish with one eye slow sleep open. Skinner’s tears flood the scarred tributaries of his cold drought cheeks. Out stretching his arms in agony as in the garden, deafening dreaming hums drown out any sweetness the moment holds and Skinner sinks down defeated under the weight of the crimes he has yet to commit.
/ Vision
he had to go and I drew him close as my heart raced to think of our son fatherless less without him who makes this more is gone to make more for us but what more do we need there is no more in my heart but him and his hands and lips and how he inhales me I will wait as I did before he knelt down in front of me and I said YES and the dusty streets sing with joy as our neighbours bake on plastic chairs leaf shaded love in my breast running with the children in the street the smell of the sun perfumes his skin and my skirt is his to lift and my love is his to leave my life fights for survival in a paused sunlit paradise deaf to all suitors my love is old too old to change it is dusty he didnt have to ask to leave but I said yes.
/ Rose Skinner
Can Gun website: https://cangungan.com/
