Fast

Hugh Dunkerley

Fast tears through the veils of awkwardness and prejudice which surround topics such as death, dementia and menstruation to provide original and often devastating readings of humanity’s relationship with nature.

Dunkerley is interested in processes of dissociation, often in 'abnormal' minds. A Breatharian and an elderly dementia sufferer are among his subjects, but this is not be mistaken for morbid introspection. His ecological and profoundly empathetic approach sees Dunkerley uncover the unsettling and often shocking beauty implicit in mortality, as in the dying Breatharian’s feeling that she is 'the chrysalis perhaps of something unimaginable'.

Elsewhere the pieces seem to be moving towards political readings, but Dunkerley is too wise to lapse into the language of the proseletizer. He confronts us instead with unsettling, judiciously placed images such as 'the slippery sacks of nothing / that were once squid' at the end of 'In a Japanese Supermarket'. By uncovering the strange, 'shrink-wrapped' aesthetics of contemporary consumerism, Dunkerley ultimately challenges his readers to reinterpret their own relationship to the natural world.

ISBN 978-1-906309-03-9
£6 plus £4 p&p