Civilisations swell and fall. They know this.
Cities burn back to the earth’s rind,
or blow empty in a sandswept waste.
Some fold into the oceans as they rise.
A city’s soul – its ether life of voices,
texts and images – dies when it does.
Sun plays with angles on the ruins,
but not a scrap of matter will be lost;
all weight returns to light, dust, heat.
And somewhere underground great silent
halls are stacked with airless jars of gems:
the crimson ones are skipped beats,
blues are held breaths, vows magenta,
curses curled like gold leaf, delicate as flames.
______
When we broke the paper walls we fell
and knelt before an army set in glass.
Men had been scanned - scalp to sole,
a hundred slices - cross-sections
as snapshots of a moment’s heat, flow, beat;
each image set in plate glass, then the men
rebuilt like spectral mummies, packed in ice,
held captive in an agony of light.
Some said this was a tomb of kings in vitro,
others said a freak show or a temple.
In truth, these men were killers,
and their colours are a road map of the soul,
a hall of infamy that shows – if only we
could read it - how evil prints into the body.
______
So this is beauty, beyond sleep, her lovers
long since forked into the soil. Her bed
is dust, but she has cheated death, distilled
into a thousand drops of sweat. Some magic
holds her prone in air forever,
like a photo of a chandelier in free-fall.
She hangs – a conjurer’s assistant - weighted
to perfection, waiting for the trick
to end. Clad in aqua binary - space, drop, space -
she once wore finery, perhaps a crown.
A single touch could break the tension
and reduce her to a pool. For touch, read kiss.
Her heart – a rare black truffle -
is a paperweight on some remote king’s table.
MICHAEL SYMMONS ROBERTS
His most recent book - 'Corpus' published by Jonathan Cape -
won the 2004 Whitbread Poetry Award
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Biography
1977 Born in UK
1996 - 1999 Central Saint Martin’s College of Art & Design
B A (Hons) in Fine Art, Printmaking and Photo media
1999 – 2001 Royal College of Art, London
M A (RCA) in Fine Art Printmaking
2003 - 2005 Fine Art Digital Co-ordinator,
Royal College of Art, London
2003 Visiting Lecturer, Central Saint Martin’s College of
Art & Design, London
2004 Visiting Lecturer, Brighton University
2004 Marries Ragnar Poulsen
2005 Birth of their son Thomas
2005 Visiting Lecturer, The Ruskin School of Fine Art,
Oxford University
2005 Visiting Lecturer, Royal Academy, London
Solo Exhibitions
2003 Intimate Distances, Beaux Arts, London
2004 Intimate Distances, SPHN Galerie, Berlin, Germany
2004 Intimate Distances, Djanogly Art Gallery, Nottingham
2006 When Two Worlds Collide, Beaux Arts, London
Group Exhibitions
1998 22 Printmakers, Standpoint Gallery, London
1999 Screensavers, Lauderdale House, Archway, London
1999 Now Vision, Victoria and Albert museum, London
2000 Divine Expiration, Takumi Studio, Gifu City, Japan
2001 Never Look Here, Foyles Gallery, London.
2002 ART2002, Beaux Arts, London
2002 Summer 2002, Beaux Arts, London
2004 Print Open, Invited artist, RWA, Bristol
2004 Summer Exhibition, The Royal Society, London
2004 Gods Becoming Men, Frissarius Museum,
Athens, Greece
2004 Summer 2004, Beaux Arts, London
2004 The Magic Inside, The Science Museum, London
2004 Technique, Royal College of Art
2005 Art 2005, Islington Design Centre
2005 Royal Academy Summer Show, London
2005 Young Masters, Art Fortnight, London
2005 Summer 2005, Beaux Arts, London
2005MiniArttextil 2005, Como, Italy
2005 Oliver & Perucchetti, Beaux Arts, London
2005 Acts, Kulturhof Flachsgasse, Speyer, Germany
Forthcoming Exhibitions
2006 Medicine and Contemporary Art,
Kunst Museum Ahlen, Germany
2006 Medicine and Contemporary Art,
Kunstspeicher Würzburg, Germany
Public Collections
2004 The Djanogly Art Gallery, Nottingham
2004 The Wellcome Trust, London
2005 The Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Bibliography
2001 The Times, page 5, 30 th May 2001
Friday Review, The Independent, 1 st June 2001
Bizarre Magazine, August 2001
Printmaking Today, page 5, Autumn 2001
2002 Art Review, December / January 2002
Art Tomorrow , Edward Lucie-Smith,
Vilo International, October 2002
2003 Jeanette Winterson, Catalogue Essay, Beaux Arts
The Art Newspaper , no.139, September 2003
Wallpaper , page 245, October 2003
Printmaking Today , page 21, Autumn 2003
2004 Kunstforum International, page 230, February 2004
Die Welt , 13 th February 2004
Printmaking Today , page 10/11, Summer 2004
Metro , Metro Life, page 17, 27 th July 2004.
The Independent, The Information page 13, 24 th July 2004
Evening Post , page 21 2 nd September, page 3,
July 30 2004
Gods Becoming Men , Edward Lucie-Smith,
Frissarius Museum, Athens, Greece
The Guardian, The Guide, 21 st August 2004
Leonardo Magazine , Issue 37:5, Artist Statement,
Autumn 2004
2005 Daily Telegraph, page 19, 1 st June 2005
Evening Standard , page 18, 20 th June 2005
2006 Prints Now by Gill Saunders & Rosie Miles,
V&A Publication, Spring 2006
Residences, Prizes & Commissions
1999 Now Vision, Cannon Photography Prize
2000 Artist in Residence, Takumi Studio, Gifu, Japan
2001 Alf Dunn Prize
2001 Printmaking Today Prize
2004 Sound response by Max Richter to Intimate Distances
2005 The Novartis & The Daily Telegraph Visions of Science,
Art meets Science Award, Highly Commended
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