mr+mrs dull were born in November 2017, in my personal copy of Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch. A friend from Italy was staying at mine, the relationship I was in at the time was beginning to end, and I remember that in the evening I went to have a drink at the Metropolitan in West Didsbury and later spent the night loudly vomiting in his bathroom. In those days, you could have often seen me walking in Marie Louise Gardens while listening to JP Cooper singing "I got all this love, nothing to do with it now".

 

I know... [personal eye-rolling moment]

 

The sentence that caught my attention and stayed with me was "dull sex for dull people". At the time there was no art, no idea of art, no plans for making art, no risk-taking for art. There was also no love for myself and, more than love, there was no respect.

 

 

When purely by chance I went to Blackburn College and started doing the UAL / FAD Art and Design Course (Sept 2018) it never crossed my mind that today 04.02.2019 I would be sitting here, writing in my own website, after having spent a whole weekend making mr+mrs dull out of birch plywood, trying to provide a philosophical and theoretical justification to the fun I was actually having [in pure fluxus-mode: look at me, the artist!].

 

Still, I love them. Dearly.

They are part of me and represent the ME I wouldn't like people to know, that side of my family which we all would like to forget, that dreaded potential to turn into an airhead woman with no talent at any given time: dull, empty, boring, uninteresting, and shallow.

 

I love them and I also despise them. Deeply. They embody characteristics I don't like. To me, they seem to make no effort in life; they have no drive, no passions, no interests, no education, no good manners, they provide nothing, they add nothing to society. They are dull. They waste space and people's time. There is no logic in them, no reasoning, no critical thinking, no sense of responsibility. They don't ask any question; they search for no answers. They live in a circle, they move in a circle, they think in a circle, they behave in a circle. They laugh at nothing. Carlo Maria Cipolla, the famous economic historian, wrote a whole treaty about them titled The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity: "they are abundant, they are irrational, and they cause problems for others without apparent benefit to themselves". 

 

They are at peace. But it is a false peace because they don't create anything.

 

Potentially, I could turn into a mrs dull at any time.

Or fall in love with a mr dull.

 

This is why I love them. 

 

And I hope you learn to love them, too.