It’s Friday morning, one week before the opening, and you’re heading back to Stroud for a quiet weekend of rest and relaxation before it all begins. A journalist interviews you on the train – she literally meets you at Paddington station, gets on the train with you at the platform, and you chat for the entire ninety minutes that it takes to get back to Stroud. It’s the first of a series of interviews you do over the course of a week with friends, family, and strangers; at the dining table, in cafes, pubs, other people’s studios, and your Instagram DMs.

What time’s the opening again? / What’s the plan for the afters? / Have you got enough pants? / What’s left to finish off? / Was this a new way of working for you? / What are you working on next? / How are you feeling? / What do you want people to get from the work? / Are you worried about the backlash? / Are you excited? / Where did it all begin?

After you moved back home to Stroud and into your childhood bedroom at the start of the pandemic, you visited the Bristol gallery with your parents in between the lockdowns, desperate to look at another set of walls. These ones were seven metres high, beaming white, and decorated with dancehall scenes in vivid blues, purples, and oranges. The gallery was empty, so the three of you wandered around like you owned the place, peering up close at the vivid throngs of painted people. Movement, sweat, and life radiated off the canvases while your glasses fogged up from mask-breath. A closeup of dancing bodies twisting under angular spotlights became your phone wallpaper, a reminder of the ‘before’ times.

You visited Bristol on a monthly basis while you took part in an alternative art education programme there. The city transformed into a constellation of friends’ sofas and spare rooms; a home of sorts, albeit one that was two trains away from your childhood bedroom with a GWR connection you could never quite catch in time. You always came back to the gallery to see what was on. Following the dancehall, in that central space with the high walls, came giant seeds, suspended histories, pumping blood, and neat rows of chamber pots. And now it’s your turn.

Technicians are already hard at work when you arrive at the gallery on the Monday morning. The black box you drew up in Blender months ago looms before you like a monolith, taking up physical space in a way you can’t quite believe. You’re used to WeTransferring someone a file to be shown on a screen, sometimes in a cinema, sometimes on a TV in the corner of a room. It’s different with a whole team of people building an environment to your specification. You nod as someone talks you through what’s left to finish in the space, but their words go in one ear and out the other. You can’t stop grinning.

The week’s a blur, lots of talking and pointing and nodding and laughing, all going smoothly. You meet the other artist exhibiting at the gallery and chat about Telfar and Eastenders. You go for walks around the harbour whilst listening to trip-hop classics. On the way to the gallery on the morning of the opening, you nip into the city’s museum to see the graffiti covered statue of a long-dead slave trader lying on his back in a reinforced perspex case. You tower over the bronze effigy lying in state and think back to its toppling in 2020, the catalyst for all of the conversations that have led to this very moment. You blow it a kiss.

An hour before the opening, you take your parents on a private tour of the show. You show them the first work – a window into five minutes of mundanity, a video of a vacant ledge, with the sounds of schoolkids ricocheting around the cavernous room – and your mum asks you how you made the Clock vanish. You show them the second video – heaving creaks and juddering cracks echoing out of a big black box – and your dad exclaims ‘My!’, like he does when he’s often surprised. Nervously, you ask them what they think of it, and they say they’re very proud of you.

All of a sudden, the doors swing open and the gallery fills with strangers and familiar faces. Old friends, new friends, friends from Bristol, London, Stroud and everywhere in-between. There’s no time left to think about how the work might be received, as everyone’s busy looking at it now. Instead, you spent most of the opening doing laps of the gallery and soaking up the chatter.

Isn’t it cold out? / Doesn’t it look so different to the last show? / Do you know him? / Oh wait, isn’t that them over there? / How have you been? / Do you get it? / Is it really gone? / Shall we get closer? / Fucking hell that’s creepy / What do you think of it? / Shall we go see the other one now? / Do you want another drink?

The next morning, you wake up feeling worse for wear – part hangover, part dread – after finishing off the night with some celebratory ciders in the pub round the corner from the gallery. Your phone screen’s aglow with a notification that a national newspaper had already published their piece about the show, complete with a statement from Stroud’s new MP and a dramatic pull quote from you. A stranger from the internet has already emailed to call you ‘pathetic’, and another in your DMs denounces you as an ‘uncultured and obnoxious thing’. You ignore them, pop your phone on Do Not Disturb, and head out for breakfast.

On the train back to London, the adrenaline begins to ebb. You do a food shop, you wash your pants, you remove your ‘out of office’ at your day job, but you can’t quite step away from the show. You’re back in Bristol again the following weekend, running a workshop and leading a tour for the latest cohort of the alternative art education programme that you graduated from. You show them around the gallery and talk about the work and how you got there. It feels weird to come back and see that everything’s still up and running. Somehow, it’s not a hoax.

After the workshop, you head back to the same pub for another celebratory cider with the group. You’re chatting in the smoking area when someone behind you taps you on the shoulder. You turn and take a second to recognise his face: it’s an old friend from Stroud, whom you haven’t seen in years. You grew up together – primary school, secondary school, sixth form – splitting off for uni. You chose London and humanities, him Bristol and sciences. You’ve not seen each other since that pre-pandemic New Year’s Eve in the Stroud Spoons, and you didn’t keep in touch after. You’re lost for words.

He’s with another guy from your secondary school tutor group. They’d gone to the show together, visiting the pub afterwards to debrief and reminisce, while accidentally summoning you by saying your name three times. You ask how they both are – one pursuing a Physics PhD, the other teaching history, both proper jobs – and without thinking, you ask them what they thought of the show.

Well…

You’ve uttered the question now, but suddenly feel unsure if you want to know the answer.

Uh…

An emotionally loaded pause lingers for what feels like a fucking eternity.

Yeah, I liked it.