Sphexish is a word describing the mindless, routine behaviour displayed by insects. It’s derived from the sphex wasp, but it can be witnessed in spiders as they spin a web, in termites as they build their cathedrals, in ants as they tunnel, in bees as they sculpt cells into nooks of trees. It describes an evolutionary architectural project, staggered across billions of tiny bodies. Humans, with their thousands of years of potting, firing, sculpting, building, are eclipsed by these displays of instinct, impulse, intuition. These works are sacred death objects. Like urns, tombs, grave markers. They are made routinely, mindlessly, rapturously, with absolute intention, like the spinning of a web. When I make these works I am a wooly lamb smoking a ciggie in sunnies moments before the knife slits my supple retinoid throat. I am a tucked and filled insta princess with glowing nail extensions, my hand clutched loosely around a set of nuke keys. It’s all so fucking final. It’s a choice, and it’s not. — James Lemon