The Shoot of Bill Bones

Suit of Bill Bones, Aluminium Misery Guts God Head

2022

In this collaboration with photographer Benjamin Eagle, I try to embody Bill Bones, bringing with me the accoutrements that summon the alter ego. To end the shoot, I fall from the wall of Walpole Bay tidal pool into the sea. Being permanently sick traps you between worlds. You are always waiting; occupying a brink space in temporal suspension. The suit of Bill Bones keeps me safe as I make the irrevocable plunge, exiting the waiting room. This is a performative death, and a musing on how we make and cherish things to protect ourselves through interstitial zones within the cycles of birth, death and rebirth.

The Suit of Bill Bones

Cotton bedspread, linen remnants

2021-22

The jacket is made of a memory laden textile, a cheap bedcover I bought with my parents. It travelled through my teen-hood and twenties, between houses after my parents’ separation, redolent of the years of the onset of my illness, finally ending up by the sea in my current home in Kent. The suit was mainly hand sewn, supine, from my bed and the sofa in my flat. I anchor the fabrics, drawing them together into stillness after years of journeying, but leaving them frayed and ragged from their voyage. It is a transitionary garment, one to provide a bed-like shell to wear outside the house, made by my hands for my body. The tactile memories of a lifetime of bed culture to be taken out into the world, austere and in disguise.