What does it mean to have an eye? Isn't this a bit like Tina Turner asking: who needs a heart when a heart can be broken? No it is not. An eye cannot be broken. However, like the heart, it can be gouged out. But how many times, and when does utter blindness set in? I fear for my eyes, I fear the world outside. I see within the fragile membrane of my sleeping intelligence. One dare not awaken to the harsh light of the miasma lest one's sight be forever tainted by the jaundiced yellow without. MIASMA  PEINTURE. This is not painting at all. This is life breathed through a seive of whirling coloured lights - synthetic blue stones, plastic pink posing as flesh, the dank green of corroded vessels of digital faeces, filthy grey undergarments besmirched with a student's carmelian lipstick. Who can I turn to when you turn away? Curatorial eyelashes demurely whispering, like the sirens drifting upon the miasmic sea, Duchamp, Duchamp ...And upon awakening, one feels the object in the gut. And it is not a round thing. It cannot be digested. It shall not pass. It is the manifestation of a drug. Where did it enter and when, one asks, was it while I was sleeping, while I went to the loo leaving my drink on the bar, while I was stood in the museum savouring the smell of my own mind? We know. It entered through the eye. But when? Were we not immediately aware of of its unpleasantness, or merely mindful of our own embarrassment? Cutting edge is indeed an embarrassment of sophomoric proportions. Perhaps it is not impossible to write sanely about this thing, and how it came to mince the intellect. But I'm not so sure. Gaze upon the mosaics of Zeugma and weep. Our eyes sleep with the fishes.

 

Cover Drawing                                                          ROSE  WYLIE