l. gravil
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Exhibition view - Daisy Laing Gallery 





Bore Holes In The World
Watercolour on paper mounted on shaped wood, with painted shelf
30x21cm 




Sources Of Light
Watercolour on paper
21.6 x 20.9cm




…In The Name Of Dreams And Discovery! —
Acrylic on wood
15.2 x 10cm











Never In Clear Words
Watercolour on paper mounted on wood with handmade shelf
17.7 x 12.8cm





The Wanderer’s Field Trip
Oil monotype on paper
24.5 x 30.3cm




To Go To The Trouble Of Leaving
Oil monotype on paper and wood
17.5 x 23.3cm


Smaller Parts
Oil monotype on paper, unframed
20 x 29cm (approx)






       
     
Entryway II
Oil monotype on paper, unframed
17 x 14cm
£80



Loose Stones Underfoot
Oil monotype on paper
16 x 22cm


















THE UPWORLD




NARRATOR Hold in your head the thought of a wanderer. Here they are with a spade or an open hole in the earth or their bare hands, and they are ready to head downwards. They are brazen and unafraid or reluctant but resigned or curious and naive - or not naive, it's up to you. Maybe they need to do this and maybe they don't. It matters only if it matters to you.

Now our wanderer is at the threshold. They say goodbye to the daylight, or to the night air, and they make that first movement downwards. They break the surface. They step into the hole. Three steps - four, five.

Lower. The air is cooler down here, a breath on damp skin. Perhaps our wanderer brought a light - and they switch it on now, or strike their match - or perhaps they plan to navigate by touch alone. The journey will differ depending. 




MINER My father was a stone-man and my mother was a digger. I come from a line of people who have been trained to take what they care for 
and smother it. When I was small 
all the men had coal-smeared lungs and blackened soles, and they would not want for anything but daylight. Daylight! That thin breathy thing, 
anaemic through the heavy grey cloud that surrounds our town. 
We have burnt a hole in the ozone. It means the ultraviolet comes through stronger and we are more likely to die from it.

We have burnt a hole in the ozone. We have dug a hole in the Earth. 
We are very practical where I am from, and good with tools. We are always prepared.
We raise our children to carry a string for the caves and a mirror for their breath and
a trowel, so that their hands do not get dirty; 
pockets full of wax-paper wrapped food and a string weighted with a stone 
so that they always know which way is down.


CANARYHere: a world built to keep you safe.
A metal box -  airtight - gilded walls - tinny - a room with a view
on both sides, the old glass scritch-scratched by dirt and dust,
and a portal to let the unkind outside soak in.

It’s a hard knock to be death’s barometer
a geiger counter for sorrow
a yellow blip
an astronaut of the below
an incongruity pulled from the vast blue and carried into the dark, 
shone like a beacon, 
pulled down in a magnetic descent: in the name of dreams and discovery!--

Inside your world is a perch. It was the least they could do. You saved them 
so that they could save you. 
If you start to falter they’ll slam the door shut
twist the dial 
put the sky back in
because they love you.

You are a bright little reporter. You are the perfect alarm.  You sing in the same way that all small creatures in the dark have ever sung,
to fill the dark,
to have an effect that you can feel,
to carve out a space the size of your voice in a place where you don’t belong.

You sing: 
you see rock you see dark you see miners you see lamps you see ladders you see drills you see mineral dust and mica.  You see the earth being moved. You see breath fogging cold and wet in the air from warm mouths. You see less and more and then more again. You see life. You see continued existence. You turn with the earth 
within the earth. You sing a small rattling safety in your inverted banshee’s trill. You sing 
and you keep singing.




WANDERERI know the Up. I went there once, as a field trip. I took my sketchbook and some charcoal - instinctively, as if I somehow knew that whatever I saw up there would be smokelike, impermanent - and then I took the stairs.

It wasn’t what I was expecting. Whatever is, really? I don’t know what else to say to you. Daylight doesn’t feel weightless like the dark does. It’s sharp. It cuts. Worse than that, you see everything. Light spills onto every single thing it touches and crawls into all the strange corners of you unasked for.

I never had a concept of everything before that point. Where I come from you have to go to the trouble of finding something before you can know it. When it’s offered to you, just like that, laid out in the sun, you have to pretend not to see it all at one or else you’ll lose your breath.






NARRATORIf you picked light you have to know that it's only the temporary kind. The candle burns down or the battery fails. Wind-up? Smart. But it's still only so strong. It moves with our traveller, holds a circle of light that bashes up against rocks and rippling sediment-amber water. The absence of light follows behind at a measured pace.

Choosing the dark means that, on some level, there is less to worry about. Our wanderer doesn't know what there is to fear. They only know that the stone is solid, and the walls are silt-lined and gritty beneath their hands. There might be a hole up ahead, but something tells me they won't mind. If you're planning on heading downwards in the dark it would be strange to be surprised that your descent is proceeding faster than intended.

Let's imagine it doesn't come to that. Let's imagine they continue, lit or unlit, unhindered. They inch slowly forwards, confident or cautious, with their fingertips trickling across the rhythmic water pits in the rock walls. Water has collected here, settled, overflowed, moved on. This has been happening for an awfully long time. Longer than the wanderer has been here. Or you. Or me.






UNDER-CHORUSwe live so gently in the down-below
carve little shapes in the walls
keep it nice, shadows smudged beneath our thumbs
pools of flicker-light
stone-bright 
radon-bloom
all ways to keep the world in smaller parts:

this place is riddled,
loose stones underfoot
bore-holes in the world -
doors, if you would like
to see doors
windows if you would not
a roof, always, 
beds of rock and earth and mud.

the ever-shifting hiss of sdiment and the crystal-drop night sky thrown in handfuls across the ceiling, 
catching the light 
radiocarbon time travel in any direction you want.




INTERLUDE: LOVE POETRY FROM THE ROCKS

SO MUCH DOWN HERE IS LIKELY TO CATCH IF DISTURBED BY  THE LIKES OF YOU
MINERALS SET DIFFERENTLY IN THE NEW FRESH AIR
VEINS OF FIRE AND VEINS OF GOLD
GLASSY QUARTZ AND COAL-CRUMBLED
SEAMS LACED THROUGH FROM BENEATH - UP / UNDER /  OVER /   THROUGH / SEARING
THOUGH YOU’D NEVER KNOW FROM BEING UP THERE
WE KNOW - LET US TELL YOU. GIVE US YOUR HAND. YOU CAN FEEL THE DIFFERENCE, CAN’T YOU? THE COLD SPACE
WHERE THE UNDER BREATHS IN, THE OUTSIDE DRIFTING THROUGH / FILLING / CAPILLARIES OF STONE / SILT / MUD / ROCK / DARK / TUMBLED / STEADY / SEE?

SEE IT ONCE AND MAYBE YOU’LL BELIEVE IT.
ONCE FOR SHOCK / TWICE FOR UNDERSTANDING
LEAVE THE PATH WIDE- OPEN
YOUR TRUST IN US IS A STONE HELD SWINGING AND IT ALWAYS POINTS TRUE -
WATER-MOTTLED ROCK BURROWED AND WEAVED
MOTH-GNAWED FLOSS
A LITTLE TINDER, YOU COULD SAY, FOR THE LAMP…




WANDERERYou do not like it when you are left alone. I like it worse when I am not.  This is a very delicate balancing act, and we never get it right
because I won’t let us. There are too many things to see, 
and so I make the choice not to see them; 
press fingers to my eyes until lights bloom spark-edged and looping. 
The upworld calls in dots and dashes, 
ons and offs, trickles of sound and feeling, 
and never in clear words.




SCENARIO FOR THE SUBTERRANEAN: You are digging your way out hand over foot, dirt under hand. Re-emergence is not a clean thing. It is messy and slow and thorough.


Choose:

A. …And my patience is wearing thin. Everything about me is wearing thin to translucency before my very eyes! (Which I no longer have, by the way; a byproduct sacrifice of the world that I’ve steeped myself in). I am faint and colourless. I take up very little space, in the grand scheme of things. Not that I would know. I have become very averse to schemes.


B. …But I’m nothing if not thorough. I came here with a map and a shovel and I never planned to be here long - just a temporary respite. The light up there is so bright. I just needed to close my eyes for a minute. That’s all.


C. …The dark, for me, is a continuous and timeless place. If something was to take me down here, I wouldn’t see it coming. I might feel a ripple in the matter that surrounds me - although I would prefer not to, of course - but the truth is that one moment I would be here and the next I would be gone. Functionally, this makes existence very simple.






UNDER--CHORUSwe look at the unstepped ground 
and you tread over it 
transitory creatures
you look at the mud and 
you stick your hands in it
if only to be the first ones who get to touch

imagine that —! if you were the first
if there was something that everyone else had missed, and you were the one to find it? 
and it was yours and you never had to put it back
or worry about putting it back

you only have to put back things that you don’t love
or maybe love too much —
but this isn’t one of those things
it’s simple. the dirt feels nice on your hands.




WANDERER


I was not built for the up but I taught myself how: 
how to see things in their whole and not by their shadow - the form of a solid object as it blocks out the light is as clear an indicator as I ever wanted but you have to look, up here; you have to look and be seen to be looking. you have to allow yourself to be seen looking. I found this immensely painful when I first arrived, but I learned, was capable of learning;
and I believe you are too. 
You will experience the open sky and you will feel afraid at first, crushed and split open. You will look at the horizon and hate it,
as you know in your heart that it keeps going past where your eyes can reach. You will learn to contend with the knowing that there is more up here, 
always more. 
In time the more feels less, then somewhere close to the right amount. This is because you have expanded out past where you thought your bounds once lay. You cannot fit back below once this realisation takes place. I’ve tried. 
Best of luck. 


Lit Or Unlit, Unhindered
Oil monotype on paper, unframed
17.5 x 25.5cm