Art

Edwina Ashton as an ant

Edwina Ashton has papered the walls of the Reading Room at Camden with what looks like a view of the French Riviera. The birds, animals and comments meticulously drawn on the paper scarcely relate to the setting or to one another, though. A green creature with a snout, and wearing a hat and bow tie, is captioned: ‘Bird terribly pleased and showing off’. The phrase that gives the show its name – ‘A delicious cutlet in the baking midday sun’ – also seems gratuitous; so does the stain on the opposite wall labelled ‘unbelievably romantic gore’.

‘Family sagas, great war disasters… the wonder and magic of theatre and laughter’ appears above a film projector operated by a white elephant. At last, something that links the wall drawings with the films showing on a real screen. Not that you would characterise them as sagas or soaps, since the characters are giant bugs behaving like humans, but hampered by their anatomy. Feature continues

‘Spring Here’ shows an ant ironing an orange sari, but it has paws instead of hands. Anatomical shortcomings similarly make it impossible for a bug sitting on a park bench to stop the wind blowing away its newspaper. In ‘Beautiful Pot’, a cotton-wool caterpillar laboriously kneads some dough before wrapping it round a pudding basin. A giant stick insect tries to catch a fly in its root-like fingers. A white rat, on the other hand, bounces balls into a bucket with great finesse. I find the mixture of slapstick and pathos irresistible; a sense of built-in failure is compounded by the fact that Ashton’s costumes are really inept.

I spoke to her on the phone at the British School in Rome where she is on a residency:

How do you get started?

I find a sleeping bag and make it into something drawn from the imagination or from natural history books. The costumes are not brilliantly made and are uncomfortable to wear, which is why the films are short – under five minutes. I used to do all the characters myself, but now its about half and half. Other people want to do them but they get very angry, and then they perform at their best.

Why bugs?

I’ve always been interested in them and, as an artist, I went on an entomological expedition to Sumatra with scientists from Oxford; it had a big impact on me. Insects aren’t cute, but they can stand in for humans. I tried making a dog costume but it didn’t work. Dogs, cats and rabbits are too familiar, so the films become like ads or something on children’s TV; but you don’t recognise my insects as a particular species.

They’re quite surreal.

I’ve always been interested in surrealism. Before studying at Goldsmiths, I did a degree in philosophy which is also relevant in a weird way. It left me with a terrible, teenage debating-society set of questions that are very embarrassing. I love film because it’s so throwaway and you can look at things that are quite serious but, at the same time, have a funny side.

Watching ‘Beautiful Pot’ I was reminded of Paul McCarthy’s videos (which involve scurrilous actions and sticky substances).

That’s nice! But my films are quite polite. I was well brought up (I went to a girls’ boarding school) and when you’re doing a philosophy degree (at Cambridge) you have to be polite. I was very bad at philosophy; it was logical and mathematical and not interested in emotional states or why people do things. The films are an escape from that. The wall drawings are similar; the birds and animals are involved in fantasies about themselves which don’t add up. They’re also being hectored by bores who want them to do tedious things. On one wall are some mice in an office and people are boring them with letters. I did an aptitude test for office work once and I got 1 per cent!

Do you feel excluded from normal society?

In a way, though I’m happy being an artist. I’m not a complete weirdo, but I indulge in daydreams in which I come out on top. The insects try to make the world work for them and they are quite happy; they don’t realise they have lost the plot! I’m driven by embarrassment, which is a forceful emotion. I’m embarrassed about everything – being human – and that’s why the bugs appear. They are embarrassing.

You are doing a performance at Camden – a brave feat for someone easily embarassed.

People keep asking me, because they recognise the element of performance in the films. I have a horror of doing anything live, so it will be a lecture in several parts, and I’ll be dressed as a bug.