Grad Show (Honours), Victorian College of the Arts, 2019
email print-out (a) transcript
Gmail - Second tongue 25 November 2019 at 13:12
Camille Thomas <camillethomas.art@gmail.com>
To: Alexandra Hobba < >
Here on the ground is a solid bronze mound, (a rhyme to start). When you look at it, it does not give away where it has come from, or how it got to here. Protruding are marks and interferences, it has no smooth surface. If you get close enough you can see the imprint of molars caressing its shape. But how? It is a solid piece of metal. Here before you is a clump of bronze; it was once wax that sat inside my mouth for several hours while I slowly poured layers of wax into another cast (of my back), can you find it? I think about trace and impression,—the shape of someone else—of myself left in another. The mouth is pooling with bacteria. When you are kissing someone you are locked in a constant exchange of your own and someone else’s fluids. Someone’s tongue gets to know the inside of your own mouth. I trace the inside of my mouth—to replicate of a movement or gesture that in essence cannot be captured (cast) between two people. Perhaps in some way to confront the loneliness of my own mouth— clearly, I feel it is not being traced enough. I want to highlight the beautiful and disgusting that comes from the inside of your mouth, from the most common form of intimacy (perhaps after sex and before cuddling in the scale of intimate acts). This wax becomes a second tongue. It sits against the silky walls of my cheeks, rubbing up against the edges of my molars. It is a visceral affair. An orifice being invaded. I pull this tongue from my mouth to speak, to warm it back together after I have lost my resist to bite down on its soft body as if it were a sweet. When water (spit) convalesces with the molecular structure of wax, it becomes grainy and difficult to stick together. It begins to repel itself. Now my mouth in just full of spit and wax debris. I must remove it, dry away excess, push back together and return to the mouth. I must not bite down on my own tongue.
Gmail - Second tongue 25 November 2019 at 13:12
Camille Thomas <camillethomas.art@gmail.com>
To: Alexandra Hobba < >
Here on the ground is a solid bronze mound, (a rhyme to start). When you look at it, it does not give away where it has come from, or how it got to here. Protruding are marks and interferences, it has no smooth surface. If you get close enough you can see the imprint of molars caressing its shape. But how? It is a solid piece of metal. Here before you is a clump of bronze; it was once wax that sat inside my mouth for several hours while I slowly poured layers of wax into another cast (of my back), can you find it? I think about trace and impression,—the shape of someone else—of myself left in another. The mouth is pooling with bacteria. When you are kissing someone you are locked in a constant exchange of your own and someone else’s fluids. Someone’s tongue gets to know the inside of your own mouth. I trace the inside of my mouth—to replicate of a movement or gesture that in essence cannot be captured (cast) between two people. Perhaps in some way to confront the loneliness of my own mouth— clearly, I feel it is not being traced enough. I want to highlight the beautiful and disgusting that comes from the inside of your mouth, from the most common form of intimacy (perhaps after sex and before cuddling in the scale of intimate acts). This wax becomes a second tongue. It sits against the silky walls of my cheeks, rubbing up against the edges of my molars. It is a visceral affair. An orifice being invaded. I pull this tongue from my mouth to speak, to warm it back together after I have lost my resist to bite down on its soft body as if it were a sweet. When water (spit) convalesces with the molecular structure of wax, it becomes grainy and difficult to stick together. It begins to repel itself. Now my mouth in just full of spit and wax debris. I must remove it, dry away excess, push back together and return to the mouth. I must not bite down on my own tongue.
email print-out (b) transcript
Gmail - I work in a gallery, I stand watch over the artwork and am there to... 4 August 2019 at 15:41
Camille Thomas <camillethomas.art@gmail.com>
To: Alexandra Hobba < >
I work in a gallery, I stand watch over the artwork and am there to answer any questions. So there is a lot of time for people watching, as lately we haven’t had much to be violated by the uninvited touch of a visitor, and no one really ever wants to talk to us. It is a mind numbing set of hours between getting there and leaving. Two girls come in carrying mini toy handbags, with a toy cat or dog head sewn to one end. The bags hold no purpose, you cannot put anything else in them – I do not know what they would have to put in them any way, as they are both under ten and already wearing backpacks. But this is a known feeling, of carrying something without purpose. Especially something small, arbitrary and essential to girlhood. Carrying dead weight. I do not know exactly where I stand now in relation to my gender, like Judith Butler “I do not wake up in the morning and pick out the clothes that will assign me my gender”. But I do identify with girlhood. I was raised a girl, and so hold a private affinity with girlness, one that is tender and does not relate to its depiction in mass culture/ consumerism. Similarly it is he same affinity I share with womanhood, one that does not extend itself to an enjoyment or comfortability with the term (or house) female. But back to the bags, I feel I have carried many bags in my life, this thesis is one of them. A capsule of everything I have read, thought, wrote, looked at, and made, I carry them all round with me, like the books I lug to and from the studio everyday without looking at them. The action still feels important. As a child I had many tiny bags, I still have a lot of them; rainbow glass bead bag no bigger than a matchbox; a little mermaid pocket of about the same size; a mint green woven bag the shape of a sphere, squashed in the centre, held together with a brass clip; a fuzzy white handbag I imagined to look a lot like the moon; the bag my Papa brought me back from India that was put away in a draw, as it was a big girl bag. I imagine the bag of my thesis – or rather this honours year, a carpet bag. Like Mary Poppin’s one, it is never ending in its capacity to hold all the random things I am trying to bring together, with a depth of vastness unseen to the plain eye, staring at this lumpy brown bag. There is ritual in the way I pack my bag everyday.
Sent from my iPhone
Gmail - I work in a gallery, I stand watch over the artwork and am there to... 4 August 2019 at 15:41
Camille Thomas <camillethomas.art@gmail.com>
To: Alexandra Hobba < >
I work in a gallery, I stand watch over the artwork and am there to answer any questions. So there is a lot of time for people watching, as lately we haven’t had much to be violated by the uninvited touch of a visitor, and no one really ever wants to talk to us. It is a mind numbing set of hours between getting there and leaving. Two girls come in carrying mini toy handbags, with a toy cat or dog head sewn to one end. The bags hold no purpose, you cannot put anything else in them – I do not know what they would have to put in them any way, as they are both under ten and already wearing backpacks. But this is a known feeling, of carrying something without purpose. Especially something small, arbitrary and essential to girlhood. Carrying dead weight. I do not know exactly where I stand now in relation to my gender, like Judith Butler “I do not wake up in the morning and pick out the clothes that will assign me my gender”. But I do identify with girlhood. I was raised a girl, and so hold a private affinity with girlness, one that is tender and does not relate to its depiction in mass culture/ consumerism. Similarly it is he same affinity I share with womanhood, one that does not extend itself to an enjoyment or comfortability with the term (or house) female. But back to the bags, I feel I have carried many bags in my life, this thesis is one of them. A capsule of everything I have read, thought, wrote, looked at, and made, I carry them all round with me, like the books I lug to and from the studio everyday without looking at them. The action still feels important. As a child I had many tiny bags, I still have a lot of them; rainbow glass bead bag no bigger than a matchbox; a little mermaid pocket of about the same size; a mint green woven bag the shape of a sphere, squashed in the centre, held together with a brass clip; a fuzzy white handbag I imagined to look a lot like the moon; the bag my Papa brought me back from India that was put away in a draw, as it was a big girl bag. I imagine the bag of my thesis – or rather this honours year, a carpet bag. Like Mary Poppin’s one, it is never ending in its capacity to hold all the random things I am trying to bring together, with a depth of vastness unseen to the plain eye, staring at this lumpy brown bag. There is ritual in the way I pack my bag everyday.
Sent from my iPhone