LUCY JANE TURPIN: What if flying were just falling in reverse

Language slips from even the most careful mouth. Lost words do not leave the window ajar after an escape. The nameless do not echo when they fall. As for silence, it is quick to make a home in a stranger’s mouth.

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allude: to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly. Was this the word they were looking for? Or could the word have been recall: from the Latin ‘re-cordis’: to pass back through the heart.

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Blind spots in vision, blind spots in vocabulary. But what of the blind spot of the heart? Maybe this is where unfound words reside. Maybe speaking from here is the verb that occurs between flying and falling.

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As a brush rises to meet the gaze of a blank canvas, one of them must surrender. The window between them now open, but neither of them want to catch the moth. Have lovers ever learnt how to reach into one another without taking anything?

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What is it that fixes a gaze? Full hands, empty chest, a memory re-surfacing to the skin. Who tells the eyes to step off, fly, fall, swim, drown. Until you touch the stranger’s hand impressed in the concrete of the seabed. Until you pass back through their heart. Do the eyes remain open when kissing the round face of awe, or is it the blind spot that sees.

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When the tree bears no visible shadow, has the shadow abandoned it, has the tree asked it to leave. Or are they embracing, proclaiming their need to merge, before the sun stretches their limbs further and further apart. How far does something walk when it leaves a room for the last time? How much closer are all last time’s to being recalled?

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Did Icarus scream or sing on his way up or down? Did the flying ants see the sky reflected in the sand? Does anyone know who closes the butterfly’s wings when it dies?

Has falling not always just been flying in reverse?

Robyn Perros

Lucy Jane Turpin (b. 1983) completed her Honours Degree in Fine Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in 2007, and her Master’s degree cum laude at the University of Stellenbosch in 2015. She has since taken part in residencies in Iceland, Morocco and most recently Italy, where she is currently based.

What if flying were just falling in reverse runs until 27 May 2023

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 Installation images by Michael Hall