Barbican ceiling, 2007
Sunday Sketches
A hotel bar, a tiny little corner, offset and quiet. A four-square dancefloor is stepped around by the occupants. The ceiling above is mirrored. The effect isn’t particularly tacky, or trashy, it’s simply a useless feature in a room better suited to cheap scotch and bar nuts.
He perches on a tall stool in the corner, wearing a grey Tom Selleck moustache and greasy hair which frame eyes sunk so far into the sockets he seems hollow. He mumbles constantly, like a talentless bastard beat poet, and fingers in turn his pint, his peanuts and his mangy denim jacket, scrabbling for eye contact but coming up short.
She yawns, hungover, hiding her face from me on the seat opposite: I don’t know her, it’s just that kind of bar. Her bra strap slips under the sleeve of her frilly top, more bookish and awkward than cute. It is a shade of pink that, I imagine, will be far from erotic and succeed only in highlighting the blotches of her skin. She gets up when her friends arrive, only to be replaced by a girl equally as deadpan. The effect is profoundly moving, as if they’re part of a continuum.
© Matthew Sheret, 2008
