Fragments, Bethan Lloyd Worthington | Shell-Lit Siambr Exhibition Publication

Specially commissioned by Sidney Cooper Gallery for the solo exhibition Shell-Lit Siambr. The accompanying publication, designed by Fraser Muggeridge Studio, is available here.

Go and kneel with your face in the recess of the tomb and say “Shell-Lit Siambr”. It will be like being told by someone else. It will surprise you right in the head.

It’s important to realise that it is not Simon saying it; it cannot be because his head was removed by eight blows to the neck.

Simon of Sudbury’s tomb, Canterbury Cathedral

Meeting bees halfway

You’re lavender milk and marble

The bees are hot incavernous

Get clean and put on white linen

Sticking drizzle lashed through the air to the borders

Syrup pulls off the fur from the bees and the hairs from your arms and the pollen and the talc

Cool surfaces slip past each other at the doorway

Humming, in heat-cracking grasses

When you wash you move your hands down over your head two times like a veil

Your heartbeat slows

So when you come to them your presence is dialed down you are barely beneath and you are not where they are

You are a cold spot in the garden, no more of interest to bees than a statue or a ghost

Reference Caves

Spider, pool, Monkey, headtorch. A really stupid thing to do.

Anywhere, but probably in the north of England. Packed lunch of sandwich and a carton. Waterproof mildew. Semi-precious stones.

Great Great Aunt Nin proprietress of the silver rings at Chwarel Hen Llanfair Slate Cavern.

Radiocarbon data on lynx bones found in two caves in the Craven area of North Yorkshire show that lynx were still present in the early medieval era, just 1500 years ago.

Philip Crow will electrify Wookey Hole. “he’s always going down there – with his electricity. This is the end; the end of all those lovely stalactite caves that Clement of Alexandria talks about!” John Cowper Powys, A Glastonbury Romance.

Object C.64-1939, V&A collection – What if I say this is a cave?

Echo Siambr of the tiny female shamans. Echo co co – ochre hands to the wall.