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Skinning the Cat Rigging
I have designed the perfect cotton rope for aerialists, which had previously become extinct following the closure of the last cotton rope making factory in Europe. Skinning the Cat Rigging provides this rope tailor-made into aerial equipment.
Following the completion of my NESTA Fellowship in 2010 I have been working on an exhibition which shows my Skinning the Cat work and the work produced during the fellowship.
The exhibition has already showed in Brighton and is on in Bradford in 2012. I have developed my skills as a multi-media artist and I make art using the human form. I now produce life-cast sculptures in which my aim is to capture character, movement and emotion. The sculptures are cast in resin, glass, mosaic and paper mâché.
The most recent addition to my work has been experimental film making. My short films are rich in multiple layers of imagery with the aim of compressing an event or period of time. The mediums of sculpture and film work separately or together to produce a three dimensional portrait. They can be seen on my Becky Truman website.
Ground Bound – the journey of an aerialist (working title)
I wrote this book during my NESTA fellowship.
Travel (excerpt)
The excitement of getting further away from home, different smells and scenery, languages, cultures. I couldn’t get enough. I came to love certain routes. My favourites always involved mountains; Switzerland with its lush, green mountains and its tunnels, or where the Pyrenees turn from France into Spain, the green of the French side turning into the arid, brown landscape of Spain. No tunnels here, so the truck often overheated on the steep inclines.
Even the service stations felt completely different. In France they were air-conditioned, clean and efficient, in Spain hotter, rougher and more than likely staffed by one man who was also running a slightly grubby tapas bar.
We knew intimately certain routes, some Belgian roads had deep tyre ruts that made the caravan weave; which of the service stations had showers, and how to plan to reach the Paris Périphérique at night to avoid the traffic jams. Journeys were harder work once Henri was born. He liked to sleep once the engine started but would often wake if some one needed a toilet stop. Driving in the van behind his vehicle we tried to hold our bladders for as long as possible, knowing that once we all stopped, the people in the cab with Henri would be condemned to playing ‘I’ll drop it and you pick it up’ for the next few hours.
My favourite times on a driving day were mealtimes. About eleven o clock in the morning, if I was driving, Helen would pass me a banana and after each bite I took she would re apply a dollop of chocolate spread for the next bite. Lunchtime, I would shout through the hatch with a long order of contents for my sandwich which I could have been planning since banana break. Something like marmite, smoked cheese, mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato, avocado and vegetarian salami on German black bread. You have to appreciate that when you drive from nine in the morning until midnight you run out of things to think about.
The evening meal would be the best as we’d actually stop to cook and stretch our legs. If I wasn’t driving after dinner I could also enjoy a gin and tonic from our bar.
By the time we stopped to park up at midnight people would be feeling a bit crabby. The business of preparing for our night stop, downing caravan legs and converting tables and sofas into beds could not happen fast enough. Finding your favourite space to sleep was the nearest you got to personal space on a driving day, some people preferred to make a bed in the truck cab just to be alone. Mainly en route we simply parked up in a truckers’ car park wherever we found ourselves. On the continent this is normal, there aren’t signs saying ‘no overnight parking’, they provide showers, toilets and cafés.