Frances Knee

In a box within a box I found the Bismark Salad words.

An old object. A piece of ‘litter’ essentially. A bit of old cardboard packaging from a “Bismark Salad”, the use by date “15 MAY 99”. 

On the back an inked-in stream of consciousness and ideas written by my father.

The words spoke to me and I became their new keeper, and they have become treasured. Years later I explore and celebrate their importance. A foundation to my own chain of thoughts, I expand on their relevance to today's world almost exactly 22 years after they were written.

The Bismark salad words are a foundation for me to work on preserving the messages within it. With the snippets of conversations about social, environmental and historical issues, they are topics which I am also drawn to instinctively. 

My work is full of  forensic and diaristic connections which are made over time. The stream of consciousness of the Bismark salad words connected to my observations today. 

The words and the narrative within them become a catalyst for creation, adding to their preciousness.

This N19 site was/is an old Irish pub in North London. I worked here for the equivalent of a week's food shop four nights a week in my second year of study of my MA. Whilst there, it was easy to become part of its community and photographing elements of the site became part of my job.

Celebrational decay told many stories of nights in the pub. Ruffians bringing in their own alcohol, tissues with dried up spillages of both booze and tears, and dead flowers once brought in to celebrate people, both in life and death.

There is a no frills approach to the running of the pub. A solution to a fly problem does not require fancy products in the land lady's eyes, just an old bottle of vinegar with the lid left off.

Focusing on this subtle object, I cast the glass bottle of vinegar in bronze along with some flies to be delicately preserved beside it.

This bronze work now lives on the site it was inspired by. Silently nodding to the preciousness of tradition and the ever changing and disappearing norm. A now functional yet decorative way to ward off pesky flies.

The Bakery....

In which a lady rolls her dough by candlelight praying for her sick son. The dough is baked in the form of long rolls and they are sold full of halloumi for 6 pence a piece in 2021 on a busy corner of a London road. The plants which frame the sparse selection of baked goods in the window are a mixture of synthetic and real, the real not planted by human hand, but grown up through cracks from the street outside.

A surreal time warp.

A "Lucky" Goldfish swims in a large globe ball beside a huge ancient till. Beside the till an old Margarine tub is used as the new inconspicuous container for coins.

The Margarine Tub she uses for each transaction inspired me to preserve & recycle both the object and the everyday moment in the form of a fully functioning bronze cast margarine tub.

The bronze tub, which was gifted to the lady, is not used instead of the plastic margarine tub as I had imagined. "It's too heavy!" she says. Instead it sits on the bare shelves holding odds and ends. It now merges with the other curious objects discolouring and fading with the shop for as long as it stands.

A man who speaks to the Crows and they to him as he sips his can of cheap brew in a park where the affluent go to picnic and walk their pedigree dogs.

   ‘’Those are the Crows Up Down there,

                                       they have been here for years, 

                                       they know people, they are very intelligent, 

                                       they remember peoples faces. 

                                       Im so glad I came out.’’

A snippet of conversation which was jotted down in a journal.

The conversation now pickled in an edition of 15 books titled, “Those Are The Crows Up Down There,” featuring the overheard words along side illustrations of the 7 species of crow that this stranger had inspired me to research.

The moment between the man and the crows was also preserved through a reality-based dreamscape in the form of this etching. The Crows speak to the man and he to them, creating a comforting bond and connection between them but also man and nature itself.