“True Story” by Lowri Evans and Sippy Cup (June 18th 2018)

The large gig room at Islington Mill named the Burrow by Fat Out has been closed and is being used by screen printers One69A until the planned refurbishment is finished. The gallery is occasionally hosting gigs, and other happenings continue in and around the warehouses on Regents Trading Estate behind the Mill. Lowri Evans of Hotpants Romance and Eggs Collective was living at the Mill bed and breakfast as artist in residence, and invited me to a performance she was planning at Caustic Coastal warehouse with abstract improvised music duo Sippy Cup and photographer Heather Glazzard. She told me that it was her celebration of the World Cup, and would be happening at the same time as England’s first match. She said the performance would be a surprise. The surprise turned out to be that she was stood naked with a large dead fish draped over her shoulder. I don’t think it’s any great secret that I’ve had a huge crush on Lowri since the first time I met her when the bands we were performing with played at a house gig in Levenshulme, so it was quite a lovely surprise to see this beautiful woman naked. It was not however a sexually arousing experience, maybe due to the presence of other people in the room and certainly due to the overwhelming stench of the fish. As Kate Armitage and Stuart Calton rattled, whistled, rustled and clanked in a corner, the candyfloss haired lady walked very slowly across the concrete floor, clutching the dead body of the silver haike close to her. Fish scales stuck to Lowri and later she said they looked like contact lenses. Another surprise: after about fifteen minutes Kate, who drums for Hotpants Romance, suddenly banged a drum and switched off the light for a few seconds. When the lights came back on, Lowri had moved to a different location and was holding the fish above her head, with her back to us. Lights would go out at roughly fifteen minute intervals for the hour and a half long performance, increasing in frequency towards the end. Each time Lowri would move to another place and took on a new pose in the silent darkness. I thought that it would have been funny if she’d walked right up to the people watching and held the fish out to them and then dropped it on someone when the lights came on. When I told her this she suggested that I get naked with a dead animal myself so that I could do it! I’m sure Jamie Robinson could find me a dead rat or pigeon somewhere around the Mill! There was a terribly worrying moment when Lowri slipped in water on the floor, but she regained her footing and didn’t fall over. She laid on the floor with the fish next to her and slowly raised her head so it was right next to the fish’s head, and I thought she might be about to kiss the fish. Later she told me there was no way she was going to kiss the fish. When she stood again her thigh looked bruised, but it was just dirt from the floor. Lowri always makes me laugh: the funniest moment was when she shuffled along with the fish along a leg and its tail on her foot. The overall feeling was rather solemn and ritualistic. All of the senses were involved in the primarily audio visual performance as the fish smelled horrible, and there was strawberry water to drink, but only Lowri was experiencing the sense of touch, holding the fish to her for most of the performance. It must have smelled worst for Lowri, and Heather actually had to stop photographing and filming towards the end as the stench got too much. I managed to reduce it by cupping my hands over my nose. At the end Lowri lied down on the floor again and didn’t move much with the fish lying alongside. Seven people watched, but only two stayed for the full performance, as people could come and go as they pleased. One lady seemed a bit disgusted by it. There could be moral objections to this performance. The prudish would frown upon public nudity, but Islington Mill isn’t known for prudery. A more serious moral objection that I pondered myself is that as a vegetarian, using a dead fish seems repugnant. It could be argued that the fish was already dead when Lowri and Heather caught an early morning taxi to Ashton to buy it, or that it could have fed people as was actually intended. When it was alive and swimming in the sea, what would it have thought of its future if we could listen to the fish? What would the fish out of water think about being paraded about artfully by a human? Did it live and die for this? When Lowri dies will a fish carry her away into the sea? Was it all a mermaid plot? Lowri said the idea behind the performance was caring for a dead thing. This reminded me that when I was a child I had cared for a dead bee. It stung me and died and I kept it in a box until it completely decayed, and I was sad that the beautiful bee slowly disintegrated. I suppose I was a little sad for the dead fish, but much happier to see Lowri and hear Sippy Cup’s longest ever performance. They created a memory that has forever transformed the freezer unit in Caustic Coastal. I’ll certainly always remember Lowri and the haike every time I go there. Aside from the duration of the performance it didn’t really have any connection to the World Cup but holding it at the same time as an England match must have drastically reduced the risk of any loaded laddishness erupting.