Bella Paloma "Bog-Lore"
The next exhibition in Display, outside the Toogs Artist Workshop is by recent Gaada Bursary recipient, artist Bella Paloma.
Bogs are lots of things.
My current hot-take is that peatbogs are like crossroads to the souls of the dead. We find records and stories of those who are deemed criminal being murdered and buried both in bogs and at crossroads so that their souls may never find their way home. Both bogs and crossroads are equivalents to the north and south pole for the migration of souls, as places where the compass spins on its axis. But it is for this reason that both the crossroad and the bog are great places to visit on the full moon at midnight to sing of your desire while walking widdershins. It can be extrapolated then, that bogs are thin places, like crossroads, Samhain, fog, sleep, your Saturn Return, grief, or the beach.
I’m a Bataille-fangirl, and I’ve always found his scatological-economics pretty compelling. They go something like this: all economic theory is a failure unless it can adequately deal with the waste-products of a society. Toilets are a kind of perfect portal through which to get close to our waste products.
I feel like grief is so often dealt with as a waste-product of death, and so we are told to streamline it as a series of linear activities. But grief isn’t linear, it will always refuse to be contained, spilling out into every part of your life. It’s almost like this spillage is itself one definition of grief. There is a relationship between peatbogs, toilets, grief, death, and the gods that feels right to me, and which I’m still learning to trace.
The tree-bog is my favourite compostable toilet.
— Bella Paloma, 2022
Huff Hallow’d Bogs, 2021, Photopolymer etching on paper
Flag Raising
noon of March 17th
Exhibition
Open until May 31st
Artist Talk
10am March 18th
