Stacey
Stacey is a fashion academic, writer and content creator. Her husband Greg was a musician and artist. He died of bowel cancer in 2021.
After his diagnosis, she curated the exhibition ‘Everything Is Now’ at the Showcase Gallery in Southampton.
“What would you do if you weren’t afraid?
Everything is valid. It doesn’t have to be a grand gesture. It just needs to delight your heart. I’d really love to go to an alpaca farm. Or hold a koala.
Greg said he regretted not dressing more like Marc Bolan. That’s where the name for the Silver Boots Supper Club came from - like 70s silver boots.
20 strangers arrived at the gallery. I talked them through it: “You’re sharing food, you’re sharing your thoughts. What would you love to do that you’re not doing?”
Someone wanted to do stand-up. Someone wanted to buy a plot of land and make it into a forest for other grieving people. Someone was like, “I want to do F1 driving.”
The person next to me came out - she’d never said it before.
Greg’s diagnosis blew fear out of the water. I felt bulletproof for six months after he died.
A chemo ward is a lonely place to be.
I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted to read something that resonated with me but I couldn’t find it.
Instagram was the place where I had real connection with people. The feedback wasn’t like “We’re thinking of you”. It was “We’re in this as well.”
I was literally there with a megaphone trying to rally the troops. I thought, we need people if we’re going to survive this.
Greg retreated inwards. He was a stereotypical artist; everything was about his creativity. This was going to be his legacy.
With my book, I want to put myself on the line. I want to talk about the things people don’t talk about.
You can’t boil this down into soundbites.
“There’s an energy that comes from grief.”
There’s an energy that comes from grief. You need to alchemise - if that’s a word - pure shit.
I definitely felt it.
I didn’t choose Greg’s cancer work for the exhibition; I chose his bright, abstract paintings.
We had Candy Chang’s really famous piece ‘Before I die’ in blackboard paint on a huge wall.
We had an artist who’d set up cameras on rollercoasters. He documented people’s terror and euphoria.
We had a tattoo artist. People could come and have a free tattoo: the word ‘now’. The permanence of a tattoo mixed with the impermanence of time.
We had to turn so many away. I didn’t know these people! They came for so many different reasons.
It was really empowering.
I was always like, I’m not an artist, I’m not a writer.
And actually, Greg was a really great cheerleader. He’d say, ‘Yes you are.’ But it’s hard when you’re married to an artist who’s so prolifically good at everything.
The exhibition was a really great opportunity to see what my strengths were. To see that I could create something.
I became a more authentic version of myself the more ill he got. Now I’m a…happier version of myself?
But that needs lots of caveats. I’m also a more traumatised version of myself. I’m more prone to the negatives. It’s made me a more extreme version of myself.
There’s no going back. Once you’ve seen something, you can’t unsee it.
I don’t think I would have done any of this if Greg hadn’t got ill.
And that’s a really complicated thought.”