Sword

My smile set wide on paddled wood

could nuzzle skin; a nick of blood.

Sword | Chris Jones

This is the second in a series of sketches from The Spirit is a Bone, my forthcoming exhibition at Derby Museum and Art Gallery

The Spirit is a Bone takes the form of a creative intervention within the Derby Museums Visual Poetry of 1001 Objects gallery. Continuing with its aim to inspire curiosity, a bespoke desk-bureau with a number of drawers has been nestled within the space. Within the recesses and drawers are a series of peculiar drawings based on the various natural history specimens that are displayed within the Fragments of Bone display; the drawings hint at half-truths, scientific misapprehensions and origin tales of dubious veracity.

Connected with the drawings are a series of beautiful, cryptic poetic epigrams, some based on the ancient Anglo-Saxon tradition of riddle poems – poems wherein the object speaks.

I am your letter tomb, a shard of tome

to trace this language written on the bone.

The Horn Book | Chris Jones

The desk-bureau has been designed as an interactive intervention, with space for visitors to continue the dialogue between collection, artist and audience by leaving a drawing or text piece of their own.

Curated by Andrea-Hadley Johnson.

The Spirit is a Bone will be available to view from May 25

Saturday May 25th from 11am-4pm Preview/Launch event

Including FREE performance reading by Chris Jones and artist’s talk with Paul Evans and Chris Jones (1-2pm).

Derby Museum and Art Gallery, The Strand, Derby, DE1 1BS

fan of horns …

In my dream I couldn’t pick those thorns

from the sunk-eyed creature’s fan of horns.

Carved Antler | Chris Jones

This is the first in a series of sketches from The Spirit is a Bone, my forthcoming exhibition at Derby Museum and Art Gallery

The Spirit is a Bone takes the form of a creative intervention within the Derby Museums Visual Poetry of 1001 Objects gallery. Continuing with its aim to inspire curiosity, a bespoke desk-bureau with a number of drawers has been nestled within the space. Within the recesses and drawers are a series of peculiar drawings based on the various natural history specimens that are displayed within the Fragments of Bone display; the drawings hint at half-truths, scientific misapprehensions and origin tales of dubious veracity.

Connected with the drawings are a series of beautiful, cryptic poetic epigrams, some based on the ancient Anglo-Saxon tradition of riddle poems – poems wherein the object speaks.

I am your letter tomb, a shard of tome

to trace this language written on the bone.

The Horn Book | Chris Jones

The desk-bureau has been designed as an interactive intervention, with space for visitors to continue the dialogue between collection, artist and audience by leaving a drawing or text piece of their own.

Curated by Andrea-Hadley Johnson.

The Spirit is a Bone will be available to view from May 25

Saturday May 25th from 11am-4pm Preview/Launch event

Including FREE performance reading by Chris Jones and artist’s talk with Paul Evans and Chris Jones (1-2pm).

Derby Museum and Art Gallery, The Strand, Derby, DE1 1BS

Inkanyamba

Bones from a Bestiary part 9: I is for Inkanyamba

This is the ninth in a series of chimerical creatures; the aim is to create an alphabet of fabulous beasts over the coming months.

With recent advances in genetic engineering it should be possible to manufacture such creatures in the laboratory; although the results will not always be practical (or, indeed, humane) …

The Inkanyamba is a legendary serpent said to be living in a waterfall lake area in the northern forests near Pietermaritzburg – most commonly in the base of Howick Falls, South Africa. The Zulu tribes of the area believe it to be a large serpent with a horse like head. Most active in the summer months, it is believed that the Inkanyamba’s anger causes the seasonal storms.

Cryptologists have suggested that they might be a form of eel, augmented by local myth. The Inkanyamba was featured on television series Animal X. 

Hippopodes (note roman-style footwear)

Bones from a Bestiary part 8: H is for Hippopodes

This is the eighth in a series of chimerical creatures; the aim is to create an alphabet of fabulous beasts over the coming months.

With recent advances in genetic engineering it should be possible to manufacture such creatures in the laboratory; although the results will not always be practical (or, indeed, humane) …

In A.D. 77-79, the classical writer Pliny the Elder published his thirty-seven volumes of encyclopedic works known as the Natural History, containing numerous entries cataloguing real and imaginary creatures.

Many of these creatures featured subsequently in the Medieval bestiaries – illustrated volumes that described various animals, birds and even rocks.

In the Natural History, Pliny writes about a strange race of people known as The Hippopodes - a race of humanoids with horses’ hooves. They were believed to live on an island off Scythia known as All-Ears Island. The Hippopodes shared this island  with two other legendary races: the Panotti and Oenae.

The Panotti were described as having bizarrely large ears – so huge that they were used in lieu of clothing and as blankets to shield their bodies against the chills of the night.

The Oeonae or Oönæ were said to subsist exclusively on birds’ eggs and oats.

Panotti

articulate

Adjective: (of a person or person’s words) having the ability to speak fluently and coherently.

articulated

Adjective: 1) having two or more sections connected by a flexible joint. 2) (of an idea or feeling) expressed; put into words …

A significant amount of my time has been spent in museum bone stores. Here I have observed – in plain, buff coloured cardboard boxes with neat, hand-written labels – the boxed-up bone-kits that might one day offer the pieces that curators need to construct the delicate, articulated skeletons of zoological specimens for museum display. This they may do, with careful hands, if the educational value of such constructions is deemed to justify the allocation of necessary funding …

The larger animal bones generally spread their load over a number of shelves – sometimes half of a horse, for example, will sit next to a hippo or in some other such unlikely juxtaposition; like so much disjointed, chimerical Airfix. Smaller animals (such as amphibians) occupy their own, individual, cardboard boxes – little rectilinear sarcophagi, with terse inscriptions.

Some of this material is effectively redundant – it might not see the light of day for decades between museum audits. But it might also provide the much-needed building blocks from which we could articulate our bestiary of skeletal beasts.

What would be the moral implications of plundering these carcasses? Is it really fair that all of this wondrous substance should be locked away in the dark? Surely a little creative articulation, a little jointing together of new ‘zoological ideas’ might offer a use – and a new value – for all of this piled up bone?

Medusa (from the marketplace of Argos)

Bones from a Bestiary part 7: G is for Gorgon

This is the seventh in a series of chimerical creatures; the aim is to create an alphabet of fabulous beasts over the coming months.

With recent advances in genetic engineering it should be possible to manufacture such creatures in the laboratory; although the results will not always be practical (or, indeed, humane) …

In Greek mythology, a Gorgon (plural: Gorgons) (Greek: Γοργών or Γοργώ Gorgon/Gorgo) was a terrifying female creature. The name derives from the Greek word gorgós, which means “dreadful”. While descriptions of Gorgons vary across Greek literature, the term commonly refers to any of three sisters who had hair of living, venomous snakes, and a horrifying visage that turned those who beheld her to stone. Traditionally, while two of the Gorgons were immortal, Stheno and Euryale, their sister Medusa was not, and she was slain by the mythical demigod and hero Perseus.

King Polydectes sent Perseus to kill Medusa, a ruse that he had devised to get him out of the way while he pursued Perseus’s mother, Danae. Some versions of the myth relate that Perseus was armed with a scythe from Hermes and a mirror (or shield) from Athena. Perseus was thus able to safely cut off Medusa’s head – without turning to stone – by looking only at her reflection in the shield. From the blood that spurted from her neck and fell into the sea sprang Pegasus and Chrysaor, her sons by Poseidon. Other sources say that each drop of blood became a snake. Perseus is said by some to have given the head, which retained the power of turning all who looked upon it into stone, to Athena. She then placed it on the mirrored shield (which was called Aegis) and gave it to Zeus. Another source says that Perseus buried the head in the marketplace of Argos.

According to other accounts, either he or Athena used the head to turn Atlas into stone, transforming him into the Atlas Mountains that held up both heaven and earth. He also used the Gorgon against a competing suitor. Ultimately, he used her against King Polydectes. When Perseus returned to the court of the king, Polydectes asked if he had the head of Medusa. Perseus replied “here it is” and held it aloft, turning the whole court to stone.

Faun Burial (probably Roman)

Bones from a Bestiary part 6: F is for Fawn (a grave for Mr Tumnus)

This is the sixth in a series of chimerical creatures; the aim is to create an alphabet of fabulous beasts over the coming months.

With recent advances in genetic engineering it should be possible to manufacture such creatures in the laboratory; although the results will not always be practical (or, indeed, humane) …

The faun is a half human - half goat manifestation of forest and animal spirits which help or hinder humans at whim; from the head to the waist being the human half, with the addition of goat horns to the crown of the head. Romans believed fauns inspired fear in men traveling in lonely, remote or wild places. They were also capable of guiding humans in need, as in the fable of Satyr and the traveller – in the title of which Latin authors substituted the word Faunus.

Fauns and satyrs were originally quite different creatures: whereas fauns are half-man and half-goat, satyrs originally were depicted as stocky, hairy, ugly dwarfs or woodwoses with the ears and tails of horses or asses. Satyrs were also more libidinous than fauns, less foolish, and more knowledgable.

Ancient Roman mythological belief also included a god named Faunus and a goddess named Fauna who were goat people.

Mr Tumnus is a fictional character in C.S.Lewis’ series The Chronicles of Narnia . He is featured prominently in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and also appears in The Horse and his Boy and The Last Battle . He is close friends with Lucy Pevensie and is the first person she meets in Narnia, as well as the first Narnian to be introduced in the series. Lewis said that the first Narnia story, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, all came to him from a single picture he had in his head of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels through a snowy wood. In that way, Tumnus was the initial inspiration for the entire Narnia series.

Encantado

Bones from a Bestiary part 5: E is for Encantado

This is the fifth in a series of chimerical creatures; the aim is to create an alphabet of fabulous beasts over the coming months.

With recent advances in genetic engineering it should be possible to manufacture such creatures in the laboratory; although the results will not always be practical (or, indeed, humane) …

Encantado is a word in Portuguese roughly translating as “enchanted one”.

The term in Brazil is used for creatures who come from a paradisiacal underwater realm called the Encante. It may refer to spirit beings or shapeshifting snakes, but most often it designates dolphins with the ability to turn into humans. Although belief in them is starting to wane, there are still plenty of South Americans who believe in their existence ardently, and claim to have seen and interacted with them, or even that they are related to them. They share the most of the same themes and features as the fairies of European folklore.

Most commonly, the stories involve a type of freshwater dolphin which lives in the Amazon River called the Boto. It is larger and more primitive-looking than the other type of Amazon dolphin, the Tucuxi.

There are three elements that best characterize encantados: superior musical ability, their seductiveness and love of sex (often resulting in illegitimate children), and their attraction to parties. Despite the fact that the Encante where they come from is supposed to be a utopia full of wealth and without pain or death, the encantados crave the pleasures and hardships of human societies.

Transformation into human form is said to be rare, and usually occurs at night. The encantado will often be seen running from a festa, despite protests from the others for it to stay, and can be seen by pursuers as it hurries to the river and reverts back to dolphin form. When it is in human form it wears a hat to hide its blowhole, which does not disappear during the shapeshift.

Besides the ability to shapeshift into human form, encantados frequently wield other magical abilities, such as the power to control storms, “enchant” or haunt humans into doing their will or becoming encantados themselves, and inflict illness, insanity, and even death. Shamans and holy men are often needed to intervene and ameliorate the situation, but sometimes the spell is so great that it cannot be completely cured. Such powers and habits make the encantado very similar to the Japanese kitsune, a supernatural fox that’s famous by its shapeshifting abilities and for having children with human beings.

Kidnapping is also a common theme in such folklore. Encantados are said to be fond of abducting humans they fall in love with, children born of their illicit love affairs, or just anyone near the river who can keep them company, and taking them back to the Encante. The fear of this is so great for many people who live across the Amazon rivers area that many of them, children and adults alike, are terrified of going near the water alone or at certain specified hours in the evening (e.g. 6 pm). Some who have supposedly encountered encantados out in canoes have been said to have gone insane, although the creatures seem to have done little more than follow their boats and nudge them from time to time.

Dobhar-chú

Bones from a Bestiary part 4: D is for Dobhar-chú

This is the fourth in a series of chimerical creatures; the aim is to create an alphabet of fabulous beasts over the coming months.

With recent advances in genetic engineering it should be possible to manufacture such creatures in the laboratory; although the results will not always be practical (or, indeed, humane) …

Dobhar-chú is roughly translated into “water hound.” It resembles both a dog and an otter though sometimes is described as a half dog, half fish. It lives in water and has fur with protective properties. Many sightings have been documented down through the years. Most recently in 2003 Irish Artist Sean Corcoran and his wife claim to have witnessed a Dobhar-Chú on Omey Island in Connemara, County Galway. In his description the large dark creature made a haunting screech, could swim fast and had orange flipper like feet.

A headstone, found in Conwall cemetery in Glenade, Co. Leitrim depicts the Dobhar-chú and is related to a tale of an attack on a local woman by the creature. The stone is claimed to be the headstone of a grave of a woman killed by the Dobhar-chú in the 17th century. Her name was supposedly Gráinne. Her husband supposedly heard her scream as she was washing clothes down at Glenade lough, Co. Leitrim and came to her aid. When he got there she was already dead, with the Dobhar-chú upon her bloody and mutilated body. The man killed the Dobhar-chú, stabbing it in the heart. As it died, it made a whistling noise, and its mate arose from the lough. Its mate chased the man but, after a long and bloody battle, he killed it as well. A headstone, found in Conwall cemetery in Glenade, Co. Leitrim depicts the Dobhar-chú and is related to a tale of an attack on a local by the creature.

Note that dobharchú is a modern Irish word for ‘otter’. The modern Irish word for water is ‘uisce’ although ‘dobhar’ is also (rarely) used. ‘Dobhar’ is a much older form and cognates are found in other Celtic languages (e.g. Welsh, ‘dwr’, water). ‘Cú’ is ‘hound’ in Irish (see, for example, ‘Cúchulainn’, the hound of Culainn).The Dobhar-chú is also known as the “dobarcu”, and anglicised as “doyarchu” and “dhuragoo”.

This Dobhar-chú has been created by transplanting the teeth of a dog into the jaw of a dog fish. It reflects my current interest in the identity of piscid linguistic ‘chimera’: dog fish, cat fish, lion fish, parrot fish, etc.

It might be possible to populate a whole aquarium with such creatures …