HAZEL

TOMLINSON

CURRENT WORK 2024

I don't know if/ I don't know if I want to be a mother/ I want to be a mother/ Harvest my organs

You’re famous for being skinny
And wearing a mini
Skirt,
And maybe no shirt.
Make other women feel less than their worth.
Give it all up to give birth
Life merchant.

Intrinsically known that caring is a laborious act.

Crooked teeth give you wings.
That’s what my mum told me.
Don’t bring that needle anywhere near my face,
I don’t need it fixing,
Twisting out of place.
Crooked teeth give you wings.
Spotty chins from hormones
And my changing cycle
Indications of life.
Living lady living breathing
Potential for reproduction.
The birth of one thousand zits
Puss filled skin clogs
Clogged up with excessive oil due to
Excess and overload.
My teeth have settled,
Been pushed and shoved around,
Fought it out amongst themselves.
Made room in places,
Nudged together in others,
I’ve an extra one for good measure.
Freak of nature,
But freakishly natural all the same.

I am a support service,
I’ve been made that way and it will never change.
I am a nurturer,
I’ve been made
but never asked.

Endlessly, plucking and tugging at those fucking little hairs.
Scraping, scratching and cutting until my body is bare.
Stripping the skin of its warmth and protection.
Swathes unnaturally uprooted from their soil.
My skin is reptilian,
But I removed it before it’s shed.

Brightening tightening
Cleansing rinsing
Thickening thinning
Bleaching tanning
plumping pruning purging splurging
this body is in a state of turning.
Changing twisting contouring reforming
until the body is no longer responding
and the mind,
started breaking,
long ago.

Continuously hoping the contingency of your development will evolve positively
But then again,
you catch,
yourself,

looking into mirrors that are 5 times the optical strength of our own eyes,
Which then delve like minute spies
Into the depths of our pours.
As if digging the dirt out of these bottomless clogged holes will excavate our ideal selves.

And so it continues.
Endlessly, plucking and tugging at those fucking little hairs.
Scraping, scratching and cutting until my body is bare.
The individual
Is a receptacle
Not necessarily born to share
And yet,
So often stared at.
Collected, remembered and
Frequently numbered.
And because of this, it continues.

A hallway is walked through, seeing age rampant and shadowless it is everywhere. The breeze
is on your back as the kitchen door is swung open and below those window panes, pages of an open book flutters. The heavy smell of stew rises out of the door, the spiced air turning to water with the smell touching sleeping nostrils in the bed of an individual with weary hands. There’s some laughter that’s disappearing into a warm afterglow on the sofa as a bad horror film plays out of the telly. There’s the folded paper with the words read on the toilet as the shit falls out specifying “No toilet roll.”; this is the same song played over and over again. Watch out! That’s the broken bit of glass stuck in the floorboards waiting for someones special fingers and there, just there, might be the small bit of soil wiped on the carpet that’s been here 5 years, 70 years or maybe even a millennia.
There’s the spot where they got violent, twice. There, is 2 whole minutes of tenderness, warm. Take a seat and listen. Here at the table, eaten at, argued over, tears falling down faces about broccoli or politics, joy... maybe just boredom. Can you hear it?
You are the guest that might arrive and see all of this, understanding the difference between a house and a home, staying and going. Maybe your eyes can verify? Objectify. Or probably not actually. Forget it.
//
Might Arrive advocates the maybes, the perhaps, the prediction more than the finalisation. Formatting the artworks as an anecdote about to happen we hope to toe the line between the curiosity of a show, the futurity of the attempt and the failure of the reveal. We ask what the spectacle in the gallery means and question the temporal causality of the subject to the spectator. We will obscure, unveil, and reconfigure.
————————————————————————————————————————
17-18th June, 12-18pm
Private view 16th June, 6-10pm
with works of Ruoru Mou, Isaac De Reza, Hazel Tomlinson, Julia Tröscher and Sam Watkins

'Faced with the bestial hostility of the storm and the hurricane, the house’s virtues of protection and resistance are transposed into human virtues. The house acquires the physical and moral energy of a human body. It braces itself to receive the downpour, it grinds its loins. When forced to do so, it bends with the blast, confident that it will right itself again in time, while continuing to deny temporary defeats. Such a house as this invites mankind to heroism of cosmic proportions.' The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard

My body was warm before you inflicted me with your chill. Cold freckled goosebumps infected my skin and protruded out in an attempt of escape. They didn't manage to and nor did I.

"LDVA Closing Party is a phigital collation of the galleries new found frequencies and collaborators throughout this year, having had to re-think physicality, LUVA [Lock Up Visual Arts] coined the ‘D’ during the ‘lockDowns’ sparking a turn to digital mediums. Celebrating the creations existing between the digital and re-embracing the physical, we explore the different dimensions of artists’ work through sound, VR projection and sculpture in our immersive [IRL] garage space.

Utilising the open source 3D model created to house virtual shows, initially our ‘Make Something That Makes You Feel Good’ in May 21, during the height of isolation. BAFA students curate their own singular exhibitions in our garage as we delve into practice that crosses borders of the online and offline, intersecting the individual through a collaborative structure.

Featuring as part of Central Saint Martins Graduate Showcase, the exhibition will present graduating BA Fine Art students and collaborate with the virtual group ‘House Mates’, alongside the editorial podcast group ‘Raid.R’."

https://luvagallery.com/

'WOT IS IT?'

THEAMS- Interested in the role feminism plays in both modern society and art, specifically dealing with the politics of care that is still present in attitudes around women.

HOW IT'S DUN N THAT- Blending the realms of private and public boundaries, the subject of women’s bodily autonomy is bought into the forefront of discussion through the negotiation of personal and private thought displayed or performed in site specific locations creating socially engaged situations for the audience.

'I STILL DON'T GET IT THO?'

Awarded Central Saint Martins Deans Award 2020/2021

Graduate

Showcase

Performance:
- Make one cob pot to the same height as you.
- Before sunrise, take up position next to the pot.
- Do not leave its side until sunset.
- Fast for this time.
- After sunset, move away from the pot.
- The pot will now continue the performance for as long as it stands.

‘Stand-Ins No.2’

11:50:00 hour performance
Hourly image stills and 2x speed time-lapse recording.

Cob, Clock & Artist

Artist in residence at Dharamkot Studio

The challenge of capturing the physical virtues of performance art in sculpture is a longstanding pursuit within Hazel Tomlinson’s practice as she aims to invoke qualities of bodily familiarity/ presence using forms, and gestures that suggest a sense of sentient human inhabitance within the static object. Once created, she then leaves the sculptures to take on the performance role alone as live installations.

In her most recent series, ‘Stand-Ins’, she negotiates this pursuit by creating a body of work that includes heated tactile pieces, constructing large-scale pots from the ancient building material of cob and engaging in endurance performances.

This investigation has led to contemplation on the similarities and differences between the performing body and the sculpture, the two counterparts’ strengths and vulnerabilities. This juxtaposition not only highlights the physical properties of both but also opens up reflections on their symbolic meanings. The sculptures, once animated by the hands that shaped them, become a static symbol of human presence whilst embodying durability, continuity, and permanence. In contrast, the human body, capable of movement and change, embodies fragility and temporality. Yet when combined, both share the period of lived experience through the presence of the performer.

Hazel Tomlinson B.1998, completed her foundation course at Leeds College of Art and progressed to study BA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins with one semester at Universität der Künste Berlin under the tutorage of Monica Bonvicini. She is currently enrolled in a residency based in Himachal Pradesh, India.

‘Stand-Ins,’ performative sculptures, Jesmonite, Steel and Heating elements.

Undulating smooth shapes
flesh-like wrinkles
the inside of an ear
the arc of a back
soft
tactile
warm.

Sensory familiarity to the body

Coddled in warmth

safe

nurtured

nestled in space

'A Study into Performative Sculpture’
Stills from ‘Stand-Ins No.2’, 11:50:00 hour performance
Image time stamps 6:00am & 17:50pm.
Cob, Clock & Artist
Artist in residence at Dharamkot Studio

2023

2022

"I am Sisyphus. And you, Honda Inverter EU 30 generator, are my boulder"

Labour performance/ a job
An ode to Jenny.

2021