Embrace

I'm sharing my living room with a 94 year old. I spent hundreds of pounds for the privilege. She sits on a white wicker chair with red rose heads tumbling down her black skirt. In her gnarled hands she embraces an alabaster plaster cast of Ione Rucquoi's head. Her name is Joan. Until tonight she didn't have a name. Now she's a sculptor's grandmother. "Careful it's heavy," Ione says, tired and at the point in her pregnancy where she's close to bursting. I carry the bubble-wrapped image inside and set it down by the table. Ione follows me in and as we take off the cloudy covering we chat again about the picture, who the lady is and the shoot. The background to the image replays in my head - the untimely death of Ione's sister, the old lady she never became, her youth captured in the cast. It's a striking image but one you can live with. PJ's image of two sisters picking over an ox heart, blood smeared around their mouths, is still wrapped up and hidden behind the sideboard banned from causing offence. The women in the house don't like it. Some of Ione's images are stronger and uncomfortable, but Embrace has a sadness to it and a complex beauty. "Oh my god that scared the hell out of me," my housmate exclaims when he walks though the door and is faced with Joan.