Ruup & Form: Live Performance - London - June 2024

Whisper Your Loud Roots was a live MRS ROE performance at Ruup & Form's central London gallery where artist Kerry Lemon painted abortifacient tansy plants directly onto her body using a paste of white icing sugar and water. Lemon skilfully weaved together historical, cultural, and personal narratives, delving into themes of resilience, autonomy and exploring sugars association with the female body, ideas of ‘sweet’ femininity, desire and denial.

This was the first of four events and further performances will follow on the 7th September, 16th November 2024 & 1st February 2025 leading to an exhibition in June 2025. Please join the mailing list for your invite here

Rachel O'Donnell PHD Associate Professor at the University of Rochester NYC wrote the following piece 'Abortifacient' in response to the 'Whisper Your Loud Roots' performance:

ABORTIFACIENT

If you plant your seed in my land then the decision of cultivation is mine
— Kerry Lemon

1

We expect a female form to be sweetness itself: a summer day, a sundress, flowing hair. The sunshine should pour in and onto freshly washed skin like a jewel.

We expect her hair to bounce, her cheeks to be rosy, a smile that will set her eyes moving. We wait for her to lie back and laugh, let sunshine wash over her figure, and flow over the flowering plant. Welcome butterflies and berries! The colour should be too bright to bear, the sun too hot, the beauty too much, the sweetness too sweet.

The sky should be blue and high, the grass green, the flowering plant yellow.

Lie here awhile and enjoy the sun. The smell of sweetness should be in the air—the flowers, like the form, should be nurturing, sensitive, demure.

They are not. Like the plant is not fit for homemade sweets, the form is not in a sweet place.

Our figure works alone, away from the sun, the grass, the sky. The sweetness is only in the sugar, an iced simple, traced on a bodily surface.

Touch her face. What if she is alone with the plant? What does she feel? She finds herself dislocated, secretive, and here emerges an unanticipated form—the one we do not expect.

Plants to forage, cultivate, prepare. And sometimes hide.

2

Collect leaf, root, and stem. Boil one—I will not say which—and drink for a period.
A time. An extraction. An infusion. Abortifacient activity: Do not drink too much if you are pregnant! Return to your menstruation, increase your bleeding, bring down your menses.

Here is the list of what you may need: abortifacients, emmenagogues, foetus extractors, placenta extractors, menstrual regulators.

It may interfere with implantation time. Its extract can interfere with the pre-implantation phase, or work on cervical ripening, or the progress of labour. Do not take it too early.

Active chemicals are volatile. Do not. Biologically active compounds are terpenoids, tannins, sterols. Do not. Impact on placental diameter. High dosages. Do not.

A flowering plant. A large shrub. The roots, the leaves. A weed. Can reduce the progesterone level. Can cause miscarriage. Can cause an inability to preserve the foetus.

There is a risk, depending on dosage. So, do not. Its mixture, when used as a vaginal suppository, is effective as a feticide. Do not.

What is it for? Expelling the product of conception.

The plant contains alkaloids such as vasicine and vasicinone. Seeds, root, and bark contain sulfur compounds.

Chamomile tea should be used cautiously during pregnancy.

The roots possess anti-fertility compounds. There is uterine activity. The extracts can be further explored. Further exploration recommended for contraceptive use. The presence of the utero-active compound. Presumably poisonous. Fetotoxic. Abortive qualities: unmeasured, unstudied,
unknown.

Emmenagogue effects bring on menstruation. Pregnant women are advised this herb can cause uterine contractions.

toxicity

do not

3

Tansy, wormwood, Queen Anne’s Lace. Digestive bitter.

Tansy, mugwort, pennyroyal. Tansy, blue cohosh, thistle. Tansy, blue-leaved mallee, black hellebore.

Cotton root.

Tansy, juniper. A bitter tea made with tansy flowers. Tansy cakes! So sweet!

The female form crafts the sweetness into a new compound, something that will work. It is not merely decorative. She has done this before. Hold out your hand and I will hand you the root, the leaves. You should not use the stems; they don’t hold as many compounds. They are simples. Go to the field and find it, plant it in your kitchen. The yellow flowers, the purple leaves, the blue roots.

Look to the blue sky, sit in the green grass, hunt for the yellow flowers. Bring the bitter herbs to a boil. Drain the leaves. Hold your nose to drink.

An exterior sweetness, an interior bitterness. A bitter herb consumed within.

The taste of garlic, the smell of garlic, the bitterness, the tainted mother’s milk. Potentially poisonous: a sharpness to its taste.

Common tansy, bitter buttons, cow bitter.

There is no sweetness here.

__________________________________________________________________

Abortifacient: Rachel ODonnell

Photo, film credit and thanks to: Alan Roe

Thanks to Varuna at Ruup & Form, Laura Mugridge and Cat Harrison at Artsadmin