FACELIFT

FACELIFT - the story

Angela works at the trampoline park Caggerly Jump (the one just off Caggerly High St). She runs kids’ parties when they are short-staffed, but her main focus is leading the Caggerly Jump Support Group - it is for people who have longggged for happiness for a longggg time, but never quite reached it (and somehow found themselves in a substantial trampoline park). Angela has no professional background in this, but she is a woman with a soft demeanour, a gentle jawline and an aura of self-sacrifice.

This is a short story about connection and community, about finding your crowd, about what is right and what is wrong, and the blurriness of what a life well lived can look like. Inspired by Pailing’s time whilst writer-in-residence at The Old Electric & performed in July 2024.

FACELIFT - the INSTALLATION

A collaboration between Mike Cassidy & Martha Pailing as part of Pailing’s 2024 residency at The Old Electric. Pailing’s writer-in-residence role was in partnership with Factory International as part of Power Plays; a 4-month festival supported by Arts Council England and a broad range of organisations aimed at developing new writing for the stage and exploring original perspectives on Blackpool.

Mike Cassidy & Martha Pailing
Ceramic stoneware, OSB board, 2024

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FACELIFT sits somewhere between laughter and grief; it preserves the story of our faces lines, folds and creases; mapping years’ worth of intimate moments from personal histories.

The works are cast from life, moulded from the faces of four artists of different generations coming through The Old Electric. Each chronicles a history of hearty laughter to open mouthed sobbing - together a celebration of joy and resilience. With a quiet but determined presence, the tiles convey composed, abstract and sometimes confronting expressions.

The title is taken from a conversation drop-in during Pailing’s residency: ‘I will not have a facelift. I will wear my life upon my face.’ It is a playful rebuke of cosmetic surgery that smoothens our facial lines, in doing so, excising the visual traces of a life well lived. The OBS board shelving imitates the OSB seating in The Old Electric’s theatre space. Here the tiles act as audience, creating a dual scene of ‘watching’ which invites both live bodies and the ceramic personalities to be spectators of each other.

NOTE FROM MP - A massive thank you to everyone who shared their thoughts & stories with me during my residency and a VERY special thanks to artists Racheal Thomasen, Martine Tudor and John Crompton (pictured below) for their time, curiosity and openness. You are brilliant!

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Pictured below: Pailing’s conversation drop-in, the process of taking face moulds, the final installation (all photos taken by Corey Wong).