Enough | Gabysolly

ENOUGH - work in progress

Stoneware, recorded and transcribed conversation

ENOUGH is about discovering balance... I wish to compile a large and varied collection of responses to what the concept of 'enough' means to many different people. I am recording conversations with participants whilst taking clay casts of their cupped hands and also making small spoons whilst sat alongside them. I see Enough as contributing, in a small way, to a collective pool of human awareness which might help guide us towards our possible new future; a place and time where we are better at understanding and negotiating personal, public and planetary limits, and where having a generous respect for these limits will enable life on Earth to continue to thrive.

How does our individual and collective understanding of enough impact on the lives of others and on the natural world?
How does our emotional sense of being enough, and of belonging within a community, affect our sense of material need?
How is our sensitivity to other people's requirements and our willingness to compromise our own, affected by our lifestyle/culture?

"The human condition is that we never feel that it’s enough, we have that constant feeling of always striving. But ultimately that striving is death informed, you know that you are going to die, so you know that you want to live a full life. You want to get to the end of your life and think that you don’t have any regrets, you didn’t live half your life, or live your whole life as if it was a dress rehearsal." Chloe

I am investigating the body as our most basic measuring tool and the hand as powerful means of individual identification. The casts will be seen with their more abstract, ghostly surface uppermost, concealing the identifying handprint and participant initials beneath. The casts are bowl-shaped, each sized to an individual's handful. They are accompanied by spoons made by each participant, which will be exchanged with one of mine; theirs impressed with their initials, mine with the word 'ENOUGH'.

I am wanting to involve a wide variety of different communities with this project, to capture a broad range of views, and am still working out how the final piece would show - as a sculptural/sound installation or maybe even a performance piece. Currently I am casting clay directly from skin but in order to be able to work with more people and to keep it more Covid safe I will investigate making alginate moulds, and taking clay impressions from the consequent plaster casts, this might enable me to incorporate words into the casts, if required. I am in the process of making my first Arts Council application. Please get in touch with any advice or if you would like to be involved in this project or have an idea for developing it further or how to show it.

Elenya

"I think that I’m getting to know myself better and realising that I can survive on far less, in a more simple way... We should all spend more time taking time to ourselves and being much slower paced and putting much less pressure on ourselves."

Lara

"I suppose this is one of the problems with a capitalist society, the more money we have the more we can spend and the more things we think we need – it’s just crazy isn’t it? We think happiness is the acquisition of possessions, and it just so isn’t, but that’s almost what we’re taught; that we need to get good jobs and be successful and earn a decent salary so we can go out and buy all this stuff that we don’t really need."

Chloe

"The human condition is that we never feel that it’s enough, we have that constant feeling of always striving- but ultimately that striving is death informed- you know that you are going to die, so you know that you want to live a full life- you want to get to the end of your life and think that you don’t have any regrets - you didn’t live half your life or live your whole life as if it was a dress rehearsal."

Toby

"How much is enough? Enough so you can survive and to be comfy with your life I guess - food, water, shelter, companionship. If it hurts other people or the environment, that is bad, but just wanting a little more is alright."

Claire

"I’ve just got to where I want to be and it's good, but yeah, I’m worried about the world, and how it has to change... the way we’re just using up the world’s resources. You have to be satisfied with less."

Tim

"Here in the West we have clearly more than enough, but there’s more to life than surviving, hence art and music and the like - theatre, that kind of thing... There’s a capitalist ideal of perfection that gets shoved down your neck at an early age, it’s just foisted upon us by people with money and power."

Caroline

"Am I enough? I kind of analysed myself and I realised that I am enough, which I didn’t do before - I didn’t give myself time."

Ronnie

"In the world there are still people who don’t have enough - though we in our country and America and other places have more than enough of things like food. But do we have enough of other things that might also be very important - like love of every human being?"

Tom

"People not thinking they’ve got enough is very fundamental to the problems that the world’s facing... It’s a taught thing. It’s been taught by the whole political set up – we’re advertised to, we’re taught to desire more."

Becky

"Shelter and safety and friendship and love are the things that make me feel safe and whole and able to function in a really good way."

Cate