Billie M. Vigne has made the contradictions of a bustling mind versus a quietened body her force. Illness imposed its shadow and tried to convert her loud light into a whisper, yet with the limitless strength of her arborescent mind, she continuously and vividly surpasses the quietened steps of her muscles. A born archivist, she regurgitates the past, whatever form it has taken, to strengthen the present and reconfigure a nebulous future. Time and logic can’t coexist in her bright mythologies as work from previous shows take on new forms and are catapulted into recent creations. Bit by bit, Bill collects and reworks vertebrae in every material to strengthen a splintered backbone, every inch cared for as anger is nurtured by incandescent humour and wit. The frozen terror that comes with being fixed and still is reimagined by Billie’s innate rebellion in her natural survival tendencies, trespassing on the celebrated notion of preservation. She appears restless and furious with her predicament. Safekeeping her mind and defying an unwelcome straitjacket, Billie imposes movement and imagination on the timeline of whoever wants to understand her personal resistance.

What cannot be explained by words in our fast-paced, dichotomous world is made visible instead, as she pushes back against the dull reality of being bed bound. A body strapped down tumbles and trembles onto its singular destination, flourishing in a wind different to that felt in the walking world. No stone is left unhoused or without a duvet in Billie’s bed, where everything discarded or unused has its own beautiful role to play. Caulk and polyfilla become beading for a shrine to an alter-ego party, glittering with crab shells, angry collages and pieces of the Margate Promenade. All woven with shreds of a beloved skirt, a soft base for the architecture of her apocalypse. Winged parachutes of cloth hung around spaces, looming as if to catch their girl however many times she feels she’s falling.

By unearthing fabric under the floorboards of her current home, giving it new, refreshed life next to wallpaper excavated from the momentous Flat 4, beauty and underlying menace do a constant conga. A home is everlasting, and anywhere her bed has voyaged is given a long celebration. The past, present and future are never disjointed as they take on hybrid tapestries of meaning. Fabric of her imagination and patches of tender or burning realities are sewn together with the same single roll of cotton thread: the humble mycelium that connects every cell of Billie’s singular, flowering existence. She hasn’t policed illness, she’s welcomed the boogie man instead and tells all his stories with the help of her nervous system pet.

It is with great pride and unquantifiable honour that The Horse Hospital welcomes Bill Bones’ wandering archive and her brand new scintillating hooves.

- Exhibition text by Alexia Marmara, August 2024