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Tuesday, 16 July 2024

Intuition (Bindi Hand Double) After Rodin, 2023

 





Double-headed Duckling, Rolf Harris Bronze sculpture of Bindi Harris’ right hand, moss

Text by SWF for Helping People Press release:

This case is to decide whether underneath your friendly and lovable exterior there is a darker side lurking. 

- Sasha Wass QC 

 

such animals often move in a disoriented and dizzy fashion, with the brains arguing with each other. Some simply zig-zag without getting anywhere. Heads may attack and even attempt to swallow each other 

 

- Prof Georgina Lake (UCLA), private correspondence 

 

 

1. Craniopagus parasiticus 

 

and what of the mirror that sits 

inside the body, intersecting the self?  

it produces fatal abnormalities 

 

het kint with 2 of everything - two minds two faces 

 

het kint 

who does not make it beyond childhood, who dies on that black slab 

 

a mirrored sword - the guillotine of england 

which makes of a man a beast of two backs  

 

or - depending on where you stand 

(perhaps you cut the rope?) 

 

the doubleheader called craniopagus parasiticus 

by medical science: the parasitic twin 

 

the 2nd palm is black 

handshake like an inkcap 

it is the mark - 

 


2. The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp 

 

There is a precedent for such dark duplications in art history. In Rembrandts turgid lamplit The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp, a man named Adriaen het Kint lies on the slab (supposedly). Het Kint: the Kid. He was a thief. His right hand had been chopped off before he was hanged. Rembrandt initially painted the corpse like this but later changed his mind. This added hand is dark and discoloured and disproportionate. Meanwhile (as noted by Sebald and many others), his left hand is not actually a left hand at all but some chimera: the visible tendons of it, which according to the location of the thumb should correspond to the palm of the left hand, are in fact the tendons of the back of a right hand. In this room there is one right hand too many. With two right hands you cannot pray.  

3. Tryst 

In the late 90s, Harrisdaughter Bindi (now Ava Reeves) learned of her fathers trystwith her childhood best friend, which began when she (the friend) was 13 and continued into her adulthood3. In her anger, Reeves reportedly smashed up Harrispaintings. 

 

 

4. Rolf on Art (2002, BBC) 

 

For Rolf on Art: Rodin, Harris made a sculpture of Reevesright hand, ‘… first modelling the hand in clay and then casting it. To my amazement I was told that Rodin used exactly the same single hand sculpture. If you look closely it is definitely NOT a pair of hands, it is a repeat casting of the same [right] hand, but placed in a slightly different position, at a different angle. Id like to thank the people at the casting foundry who nursed me through the whole process.Many were made. Now purchasable from several online galleries for a few hundred quid - nearly worth it for the smelted price.