In the month of June I was the artist in residence at Butler Gallery Kilkenny. During this time I used the garden studios to develop my practice and I also facilitated a stick and poke fruit workshop in the learning centre of the gallery.
The workshop
On Saturday June 22nd I facilitated a stick and poke fruit workshop in which attendees learnt how to tattoo fruit. This workshop was aimed at engaging queer adults and it was booked out.
We make marks and scribe ourselves into our new forms, ever evolving and imprinting on one another.
Cúan Cusack will facilitate a mindful DIY fruit tattoo workshop. Stick and poke tattooing has been a long-standing practice at the fringes of queer life. Mark-making has often created space for reclaiming our fruity bodies. In this workshop LGBTQ+ people and friends will learn how to embed ink in the skin of fruits. Drawing on themes of joy and solidarity.
This workshop will encourage conversation about the queer joy and our futures. Fruit and materials will be provided. This is an over-18s workshop for all abilities and interests.
Photo: fresh and dried fruit tattoo
Photo: Squash tattooed by Cam
Worksop promotion and preparation
To prep for the workshop I timed and trialled the activity, with a test participant and tested multiple fruits and veg. I then designed a QR tearaway poster that I circulated in local businesses and hang out spots popular with queers.
Photo credit: Butler Gallery, 2024
The residency
I used my time in the gallery to reflect on my practice. Choosing to focus on queer community and connections as a theme for my work. Initially I began mapping my network. then I focused on particular individuals. Writing letters and drawing images of objects I associate with them. Serving as tiny snapshots of the community. Small moments, shared experiences and humanising accounts of real people. I chose to address each letter to the reader to include them in the work, inviting them to join the network. I hope to expand this work to become a zine or small book.
You posted me a plastic Petree dish with glow in the dark mushroom spores inside. The spores are waiting for the right conditions to bloom. With it you send me a notebook, saying you know that I will create something magic here.
I had never met anyone to this point that believed so strongly in our capacity for creativity. A pure DIY dyke ideology. “If you want to perform at something or do something just organise it”. You build the ecosystem you need to survive.
I cried watching your film, your pain clear and vulnerable. There is a shrinking humiliation to being visibly trans. The dripping blood from your nose, soaked up by a tampon. Reincarnating your experience in our environment. The one outside our control. The screen glowing in the theatre, growing out at me.
Were these the rights conditions?
You gave me your left-over T while I waited for my appointment at the gender clinic. You tell me “2 - 3 pups every day”. I diligently rub the alcohol onto myself every morning. It's been almost 3 years and I have yet to have an appointment. Luckily, I found other means.
When you want something badly you will always find ways to do it.
You told me about your treatment, your hands obsessively crocheting to deal with the exhaustion and pain you feel. Wobbling on your platform trainers, me taking your arm to steady you. You crocheted me a vest. Black, blue and purple hues. The wool bought on one of our excursions to Cahill’s. An endless shop with a collapsing roof, the panels waiting to fall from the ceiling, stained with mould.
We traded art for art, your vest for a painting of “Honey” a woolly white dog that you taught to stand on 2 legs and twirl for treats. You are waiting for your treatment now. You share a poster I made on your Instagram it read “queer people have existed forever” in bold elongated type with hundreds of names of historic and current queers in the background.
I thought about how we will continue to exist forever
quietly waiting
rage waiting
and making things happen because we are sick of waiting
