6 August 2026
Core: a painting that began after seeing an apple core on the ground by the Thames in Woolwich. Bent, warped, dried, bitten, twisted, chewed, skeletal, discarded. Bending up and down. And serving as a housing for some small insects. Brilliant yellow-orange-red gradient, from left to right. Its stem hovered off the pavement, but the tip was bent into a right angle at the end as if it had hit the ground first whenever it fell from whatever hand was holding it.
At midnight on Friday, one of the flats in the blocks just on the other side of our backyard fence burned down. There were some crackling sounds and pops, a woman yelled “what have you done,” a small family rushed out of the front door, and the place exploded. Hono and I watched in silence from my room as an alarm wailed, glass shattered, flames danced up stairs, windows became incandescent, and a cloud of black smoke mushroomed into the night sky.