Pretty and deadly at first – but art’s peplomers
strike our eye more subtly than the coronavirus.
We won’t quite die but our gaze remains infected,
can’t unsee these tight translucent curls of twisted film
and coffee pods metamorphose to parasite petals.
What rough beast slouches cute from the swamp?
Some would call it art’s resurrecting gaze –
seeing new life branching from the club-foot ripped limb
of the dead mistletoe: copper wire tendrils seemingly choke
the stump’s throat but, like Persephone from the Underworld,
they twitch the rhizomal mass to new life of sashay and dare –
death-blue celluloid leaves sheathe pale blue blushes
of discarded government CDs – a glorious decay thrusting
and pulling – defying the odds as its hybrid life effloresces …

thought an oddity at first, brings together violin and cello
to wrestle and strut, goaded by piccolo, bassoon and strings,
made me think again of the mandala’s silky oak Vitruvian woman
for its sculpting and weaving a bushy womb-with-a-view –
an asymmetrical miniverse with a parlement of wattle birds
chattering on its frondy labia majora while pecking casually
(or intently) at the turmeric honeycombs crusting its folds.
At the centre is the rooting stump, nerve filaments fingering
the layers of soil to feed and stimulate, while its clitoral foliage
blossoms awesome. This world is fragrant, untoxic, uncoronaed –
minute and spacious – under the baton of the artist conductor
as the instruments skirl and twist their parts: frei aber einsam.
Art’s Wednesday is flourishing, balancing the week.

By David Gilbey