My beautiful, creative and talented friend, Patch (do check out her artwork here), recently shared a photograph of her mermaid tattoo on her thigh (pictured above) with me. What I found particularly striking about this image, was the uncanny resemblance it bore to Youki Desnos’ mermaid tattoo (pictured below), which is similarly positioned on her thigh.
Youki Desnos showing her mermaid tattoo (Robert Doisneau, Paris c.1950)
This chance encounter between the two mermaid tattoos really resonated with Patch, prompting her response to the image: ‘I love that shot, [Youki’s] confidence and the fact [the men] look impressed rather than letchy’. Indeed, both women can be seen controlling the gaze in their respective photographs and embracing their femininity through the siren figure.
Mélusine (one of the pictures from the series Les sept épées hors du fourreau in homage to Apollinaire) painted in 1957 oil on canvas, 150 x 50 cm, Private Collection) Toyen
The sunflower smiles through the blood of the rubble to greet the new day
He who cannot play chess only uses brutality
Butterfly children slaughtered by noblemen in the city
Sugar the petrol, sell your guns and hide
The children roar in wild tears until they cry themselves to sleep
Ghosts should rise up to drag the warmonger to hell!
The desert queen serves the mad king
The mad king is distended
Avenging strife embitters human life
What is invisible will light up the sky in incandescent colours
The doll child hides in East Budleigh
Ivan Bilibin and Pushkin should curse the mad king to hell
A chorus of war cries from behind keyboards far from harm
The alchemy of dreaming heals the broken hearts
Screams and curses across myriad media apps
Karkhiv can never sleep, can only dream of peace, can only endure in the hearts and minds of those who will carry hope to the highest mountains for all to see
A half-hearted re-enactment of old mistakes, but with real deaths
Extra points for the grim reaper for taking the mad king
Workers and refugees captured and tortured in a celluloid prison
The young woman took her revolver to bed and was prepared to use it
Inferno awaits the mad king
The boys in the field are bored, or afraid or just excited by the game
My son is missing an eye and my mother’s wing has been ripped
Dante should pull him down there
Inevitable as a pub brawl at closing time, last orders called
The imaginary letter, Z, doesn’t exist in Russian. Neither should the mad king
The inferno takes them all to his heart until they march to the beat of the war drums, the death drums, the holocaust drums
No one is leaving until we find out who really started it
Every embrace is a sign of hope, of defiance
Where are the angels now?
The wind blows the shards of the silent mirrors across their broken faces and captures their death throes for all to see
A world left blind and toothless by the law of revenge
We suffocated on steam that turned into locks of human hair
The mad king of antiquity belongs in the past, not now
We run and burn and fall and run over and over again
And midnight trembled to see such terrors
The fighting leaves old men deformed in the streets
May Baba Yaga escort the mad king to hell
A stain upon another generation, damned to repeat the whims of their rabid masters
All of this just to reset the board for the next time
Blood stained the monochrome city of ashes
We, the invisible demand to be heard even if we cannot be seen
May the liar choke on his lies
She hung up the remnants of shame like a ventriloquist’s flag for all to see
Criminals jostle to steal the clothes and words of the famous dead
The mad king is fragile, just like a chess king. And like a chess king, I want to throw him to the ground
The war is fought by actors and actresses, not by women and children
Who pays the price?
We bleed
Spent
How much longer?
Collective poem by Doug Campbell, Taya King, Daina Kopp and Darren Thomas
Digital Collage ‘The Board and the Game’ by Doug CampbellHand cut collage with mixed media ‘The Mad King’ by Taya KingPainting, with mixed media ‘Poor Strategy’ by Daina KoppPainting, with mixed media ‘My Prayers’ by Daina KoppHand cut collage with mixed media ‘In All This Light’ by Darren Thomas
Darren and I recently took a trip to Battlesbridge – an historic village in Essex that is famous for its Victorian mill, which has since been converted into an antiques centre. The former mill houses many antique collectibles, as well an extensive selection of craft materials that are perfect for collaging. Among them, we discovered the below siren statue.
Our global network of researchers at lasirenasurrealistgroup@gmail.com are dedicated to finding sirens all over the world. Can you help them in their mission to uncover the secrets of the sirens?
Our dear friend and regular contributor to the blog, John Richardson, recently went siren spotting in Stamford, Lincolnshire, and kindly shared this report with us: “Wandering through Stamford we spotted this…..We liked the image and the play on words which it suggested to us…”. The results of this fruitful excursion are displayed below.
As always, we urge siren spotters everywhere to continue sharing their research findings with us at lasirenasurrealistgroup@gmail.com.
Taya: The international spirit of the Surrealist Exhibition in Cairo is reflected here in the hybrid union of the creature’s three culturally distinct heads, including (from left to right) that of a Moai statue from Easter Island, an ancient Greek sculpture from the Classical period and an ancient Egyptian mummy from the host country, all of which were sourced from Harter’s Picture Archive for Collage and Illustration.
(Hand cut collage by Taya King)
Darren: I sourced the torso from an old favourite of mine – Heck’s Pictorial Archive of Nature and Science, from the section on anatomical bodies. I was struck by the positioning of the arms, which I read as a welcoming gesture and immediately brought back fond memories of how I felt when I was in Cairo amongst my surrealist comrades, who embraced La Sirena with open arms. I cannot think of a more fitting gesture to grace the cover of the anthology for the International Exhibition of Surrealism, with its emphasis on internationalism, open to all.
(Hand cut collage by Darren Thomas)
The butterfly wings were taken from another of my favourite books: The Observer Book of Butterflies. I am constantly drawn to butterflies because of their association with flight, freedom, transformation, rebirth and hope, and, again, these associations were wedded to my experiences of flying to Cairo and being part of the exhibition, which was truly transformative.
Daina: I’ve always been fond of bestiaries and fantastical creatures like those imagined by Hieronymus Bosch (1450 – 1516), Peter Bruegel the Elder (1525? – 1569) and J J Grandville (1803 – 1847). I love medieval bestiaries and pull a lot of inspiration for my work from such books.
(Digital collage by Daina Kopp)
The hips came from an image of, Pan, the Greek god of Shepards and the mountain wilds. The tail came from an engraving, DRAGON, 1640. Draco Aethiopicus. Woodcut from Ulisse Aldrovandi’s ‘Serpentum et Draconium Historiae’, Bologna, Italy, 1640.
I can’t recall where the image of Pan came from exactly. It might have been from the book Treasury of Fantastical and Mythological Creatures: 1087 Renderings from Historical Sources by Richard Huber.
Doug: For the legs, I used a reversed stock image of a knight in full body armour.
(Digital collage by Doug Campbell)
This turns out to be a 16th century wood engraving by Vecellio Cesare, a cousin of Titian! The metal ‘scales’ on the legs made me think of birds and reptiles, so I found textbook engravings of chicken feet and added them on.
La Sirena 