The Skinny Showcase: Jessica Ramm

Gallery | 09 Jun 2009

To attempt to hold fast an instant is doubtful
To bind an emotion is unthinkable
To petrify love impossible
It is beautiful to be transitory
How lovely it is not to have to live forever                          
-Jean Tinguely

It is our hunger that keeps us alive. Yet our appetite binds us, consumes us, makes us vulnerable and fragile.
From the devotee who breathes in the curling incense of the temple in Karnataka to the shrouded figure who appears to be repeatedly banging his head off the wailing wall in Jerusalem. From the weeping woman who kisses the stone slab in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to the man who inhales the dusty odour of his prayer rug as he prostrates towards Mecca. We crave significance, we search for a message.
We wish for the occluded to be revealed to us. Yet it is the not-knowing that strings us along one step after another. It is the ache in our belly that reminds us we are still here. Still mortal.
-Jessica Ramm

When we speak of the word “life”, it must be understood we are not referring to life as we know it from its surface of fact, but to that fragile fluctuating centre which forms never reach.                                                            
-Artaud