Exercise 2
My earliest memories are vague, but none the less they are still lodged in my brain. Lacking in exacting detail they remain a surreal reality, a whisper of a memory, a shimmer of consciousness. I hold buried deep within memory a scene from when I was still crawling. An image of a gaudy 1970’s patterned orange carpet, an open plan living/dining room and an image of the semi-iconic 1970’s print of the Blue Lady – a print that adorned many a wall in this decade. Fast forward a few years, just as I was exiting my toddler years and approaching nursery school age, an event happened that was indelibly burnt into my psyche. I can’t clearly remember the run up, but I can remember the act and the aftermath. I grabbed, off the kitchen work surface, a full bottle of open junior aspirin, hid behind the green sofa and proceeded to eat as many as I could. I don’t exactly remember why, and I don’t remember them tasting awful, what I do remember though is my mother’s scream and her fearful expression as she realised what had occurred. A fast-paced trip in an ambulance and the procedure of having my stomach pumped ensured no lasting damage, but the trauma of the event made sure that it was logged in my memory as one of my earliest vivid memories. I can only assume that I’d made the association with sweets, hence my desire to eat them.
Stomach Pump, 1974.
I think my image is a representation of my childhood confusion. At such a tender age we are constantly being guided/told what to do, what’s good for us and what’s bad for us and our own intuition questions and often pushes against parental advice. Replace Tutti Futtis with Skittles and Junior Aspirin with Nurofen, add a dose of Freudian child psychology and the results are the same, a child that is questioning what is told and pushing the boundaries of behaviour. I like to think my image represents hidden danger and how children see things with an air of intrigue.
“Don’t play with matches.”
“Why?”
“OOPS.”
Context and Narrative 