Elspeth Walker

My Life as a Lobster is a three part essay collection for my final major project at the RCA. This body of work explored the social mythologies surrounding the lobster, and what happens when we question and remove the narratives that surround them. Exploring notions of all giving love, the hierarchies of pleasure through sex, food and class relationships, and finally the dehumanisation of the disabled body after death.

Using my own encounters with the emotional lobster through out my life, I've tried to uncover the what reality lies beneath these projected myths - do they teach us toxic forms of love? Do they uphold class structures? Do they keep sex as a dirty desire? Do they allow us to let some die without consequence or thought?

'How do you start to tell people things they already know and convince them they’ve actually been seeing it wrong all this time? The answer - arrogance, or basic confidence. Life is often compared to performance. Beyond the basic animal instincts, we deem behaviour, there is something we shroud ourselves in to occupy many spaces, to create a reality we feel comfortable in, to manipulate our surroundings to give a desired effect.  To assume you are like something else, or that something else is so you, is the beginning of inaccurate description. Relying heavily on metaphors, self-proclaimed or ancient, is the marker of not having the words to describe it yourself. Not having the right experience to match what you are trying to convey. 

Enter the lobster.' 



This collection of work combines performative research and bodily encounters with places, foods and objects that have held a lobsterish hold over me, using a shell in each situation to provoke and reinforce the idea I am not in fact a lobster, but rather have succumbed to its narratives.

The Red House :Conversations on how successful public art is created, is a project exploring the Red House public art sculpture by Colin Wilbourn, as part of the St Peter's Riverside Sculpture Project trail, in Sunderland, North-East England.

This artwork was the first that I ever felt able to touch. It is an artwork which brought together three generations of my family. It was a living dollhouse, and a time capsule of our local working-class history.

The Red House has always been a marker for a successful form of public art for me, and started conversations with locals, the artist himself and academics into what has enabled this work to thrive and others to fall flat.

'In the past few years public art has been playing on my mind a lot. From global conversations of monument culture and how it holds onto prejudicial and traumatic history, mostly surrounding the statues of slave traders across Western cultures, to how art is being placed externally as a marketing technique for galleries, the Hayward’s display facing Waterloo Bridge being a great example as it has morphed from commissions to exhibition posters. The art world has been reacting to this idea. Kara Walker’s Fons Amereicanus highlighted how monuments often portray the history of the oppressors, and the reality of a statue that reflected true historical events, displayed in theTate Modern in 2020. The same year the Black Live Matter movement awoken many to the systemic racism still in our society, including the statues to slave traders, the same year the statue of Edward Colston was knocked down in Bristol. Two years later the CCA at Goldsmiths has an exhibition entitled Testament, exhibiting ideas for public art work that challenges how we see it now. Its purpose, how interactive it is, and the idea of how public art can create questions (however, it should be noted, this experience was confined to a gallery space, questioning the ability for the works to succeed in their aims).

During this time, I, personally, have moved to London, lived in various places, and stepped into a city steeped in art in the public sphere. Yet, one work I always come back to is the Red House. As I have gotten older I have become amazed at how we were able to interact with it, and the history it holds, one of the working class, and one that doesn’t seek to re-traumatise its viewers, yet recognises the local area.'

Ruderal is an experimental piece of work that gives voice to various parts of the marble arch mound to explore the impact of the space, and relationship of the materials in the area. It was written as part of the CHS RCA module, but later adapted into a small press object after, with each having a different cover from found materials to tie into the content of the work.

The Egg of Whitechapel plays on my first encounter with Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi’s artwork. Focusing on the eggshell, originally sent to me in a video by a guy I met on a dating app, I used it as a focal point to negotiate my feelings of being with another person again. When I visited the gallery, I ended up projecting my vulnerabilities onto each artwork, questioning who I was in London, using the creative essay form to replicate my thoughts.

This work was created in response to a call out by the Whitechapel Gallery, London, for their Young Writers in Residence, which I was runner up for.

During my Zine residency at Cornwall Zine Library & Fish Factory, Penryn, Cornwall, I explored the local area, and drew inspiration from the rock forms that line it's coast. This resulted in the production of two zines and one photobook.

Tectonics:

This zine looks at more experimental modes of publishing, using collage that form new landscapes using images of local rock formations, and automatic writing in response.

The Rocks Have Been Talking:

An A3 Riso print zine, it is the first in a wider series of zines that explores climate change, and human impact on local space, through giving voice to local landforms.

Dear Family:

This photo book, printed with a Riso printer, is a catalogue of a performance piece that arose after finding a porthole/key on the coast line. Feeling connected to the rusting rocky structure, it became a mode of communication with my wider family history, who have worked in quarries and on ships.

These projects are thanks to the support of those at the residency and will be archived as part of their zine library collection.