FACELIFT

FACELIFT - the story

Inspired by Pailing’s time whilst whilst writer-in-residence at The Old Electric. A short story about connection and community, about finding your crowd, about what is right and what is wrong, and the blurriness of what a life well lived can look like. Performed at The Old Electric in July 2024. A reading / video can be found here:

FACELIFT - the INSTALLATION

A collaboration between Mike Cassidy & Martha Pailing as part of Pailing’s 2024 residency at The Old Electric. Pailing’s writer-in-residence role was in partnership with Factory International as part of Power Plays; a 4-month festival supported by Arts Council England and a broad range of organisations aimed at developing new writing for the stage and exploring original perspectives on Blackpool.

Mike Cassidy & Martha Pailing
Ceramic stoneware, OSB board, 2024

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FACELIFT sits somewhere between laughter and grief; it preserves the story of our faces lines, folds and creases; mapping years’ worth of intimate moments from personal histories.

The works are cast from life, moulded from the faces of four artists of different generations coming through The Old Electric. Each chronicles a history of hearty laughter to open mouthed sobbing - together a celebration of joy and resilience. With a quiet but determined presence, the tiles convey composed, abstract and sometimes confronting expressions.

The title is taken from a conversation drop-in during Pailing’s residency: ‘I will not have a facelift. I will wear my life upon my face.’ It is a playful rebuke of cosmetic surgery that smoothens our facial lines, in doing so, excising the visual traces of a life well lived. The OBS board shelving imitates the OSB seating in The Old Electric’s theatre space. Here the tiles act as audience, creating a dual scene of ‘watching’ which invites both live bodies and the ceramic personalities to be spectators of each other.

NOTE FROM MP - A massive thank you to everyone who shared their thoughts & stories with me during my residency and a VERY special thanks to artists Racheal Thomasen, Martine Tudor and John Crompton (pictured below) for their time, curiosity and openness. You are brilliant!

WORDS FROM RESDEINCY CONVERSATIONS:
’Laughing so hard you get abs, it’s catharsis’
’Mischief is an important part of life’
‘What has 4 wheels and flies? A bin lorry’
‘No - rubbish and I forget the punchline, don’t want to embarrass myself’
’I was once in the deepest depression you could possibly imagine, that was because I lost my wife a few month earlier, if I was to laugh at that point, I wouldn’t have found anything funny, I never would have felt it, laughter was complete waste of time’
‘She was wearing one black and one blue shoe, at the funeral, we laughed, it lifted us’
‘We have this silvery laugh that deflects male attention and deflects male threat’
‘Creativity as a privilege and indulgence’
’Don’t you think that the best jokes of all are between friends?’
‘Where do you make new friends when you are an adult?’

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Pictured below: Pailing’s conversation drop-in, the process of taking face moulds, the final installation (these photos are taken by Corey Wong).