Hot Art by Denis Brown

4 calfskin vellum panels presented as one work, 30 x 63 cm. Each panel is stretched over a plywood board which was sealed and faced with museum board. The 4 are framed together as you see them.

Birthday Suit is written on top of the transparent vellum, the flourishes are underneath, showing through the skin. The term relates to Catherine Byron's text on panel three,described below. The gold symbols along the bottom represent the gradual historical development of our roman letter A, from the ancient Phoenician Aleph, which was represented by an ox-head. They form a conceptual play: just as the vellum writing surface came from the ox, so too did the letter that dresses the skin. A strand of horsehair is attached over the writing- another animal element in this layered sandwich of: paper, ink, skin, ink, hair. The sides are illuminated with gold leaf.

This vellum is from a very strongly marked natural calfskin which speaks even without additional marks, in this case limited to an illuminated square of letters and a single letter A in black ink. The coloured square features white painted letters spelling "skin" and "inks", whether read vertically or horizontally. This is a further development of the conceptual play relating the surface and the message it carries -"skin" and "inks" are anagrams of each other.

This text is written underneath the transparent calfskin. Yes- vellum so fine and thin that it is like tracing paper, yet still bearing natural tones and hair follicles. This is known as slunk vellum, as it comes from naturally stillborn calves- animals slung from the mothers body - the tragic end of a pure life untainted by the outside world.

The remarkable text of this panel is from poet Catherine Byron's book, The Getting of Vellum, a book inspired by our collaborations. Catherine witnessed the skinning of a 'three days dead calf' and found it to be 'like watching a birth, not a flaying, this headfirst slow emergence from its skin as if from the birth canal'. You can order this book at www.salmonpoetry.com/vellum.html.

Some white flourishes and coloured dots on top of the vellum, and some horsehair, complete this panel.

Fourth panel

Animal rationale: a reasoning animal- normally referring to man, but in this context also suggesting the calves which, despite their tragic end, achieved immortality in manuscript books made from their skins. The knowledge contained in books is the reasoning aspect given to these calves.

Again this is transparent vellum, but this time what shows through from underneath is human skin... the vellum is stretched over a monoprint bearing a photographic image of my own stomach. The detail illustrated at the top of this page shows some real human hairs protruding through a square-cut hole in the vellum.

A quotation at the very base of this panel is from the opening of an Anglo Saxon riddle which describes the making of a book:

A life-thief stole my world-strength,

Ripped off flesh and left me skin,

Dipped me in water and drew me out.

Stretched me bare in the tight sun...

Detail showing hairs emerging from a square cut hole in the transparent calfskin