Haunted

I have been haunted by the tale of Rumpelstiltskin since the age of 22.  As a young art student I became interested in fairy tales, I expect because I was reading them to my son who was then 3 or 4 at the time, but also because I was interested in the link between fairy stories and dreams.  In the second year of my degree at Birmingham School of Art I had the opportunity to exhibit work in a vacant building, I seem to remember it being described as an  Old Library, but seemed more like a church to me.  


With this opportunity I decided to make an installation with the story of Rumpelstiltskin in mind.  At the time, like many readers of the story, I was struck by the image of spinning straw into gold and wanted to make work around this theme of transformation.  I procured several bales of straw, my memory fails me as to where from, and I borrowed a spinning wheel from the textiles department based in Gosta Green, Perry Bar, Birmingham.   

I didn't really know what to do next.  I wanted to make a performance, a piece of live art but lacking the skills, experience and training I was unsure how to begin.  I went home and spent the evening making a dress by altering one of my mother's petticoats, adding gold fabric and so on.  

Still I didn't know what to do, I remember eating lunch with my mum and then heading back to Birmingham, carrying my son on my shoulders, the golden dress in my bag.  


For my piece in our group show, I decided to lie very still on my bed of straw with a golden thread running from the spinning wheel into my hand.   I did the performance/installation twice, during the private view and then on a weekday morning when the exhibition was open.   I remember lying completely still for about three hours wondering what on earth I was doing, particularly as there was no audience.  I remember when I had finished my "performance" and was about to get changed when a friend came by with a message asking me to phone home.  I went straight to a phone box (it was the mid 90's!) still dressed in my golden threads.  


My dad picked up the phone, he said to me,
"Your mother died this morning".  
My heart was harpooned.  The physicality of the shock took my breath away.
"Where is she?"
I changed out of my ragged dress, picked up my son from nursery, caught the next train home.
"Can I see her?"


When I arrived home she was gone.  Her body had been taken swiftly away in a body bag, put into an unmarked van and driven to the morgue.  I felt as if I had been subject to a cruel magic trick; now she was here, making some lunch.

Within a day or two she was gone.  

This was the beginning of a journey, my mother was gone, but I had a golden thread in my hand and I began to follow it.