Comedian and artist Harriet Richardson has permanently tattooed the names of the mothers of every man she has ever slept with onto her body – including two she had to hire a private detective to track down.
The Manchester-born performer now has 15 women’s names running down her body in chronological order, beginning with the mother of the first man she slept with and ending with the most recent.
It is Richardson’s first and only tattoo – particularly significant considering she doesn’t actually like tattoos very much – and forms part of her performance art project Temporary.
‘Temporary is essentially the name of the one woman that every man holds apart from all others in his life,’ Richardson told Metro.
‘The one holy woman on the body of someone who’s more often than not deemed temporary.’
Richardson initially knew 12 of the names from diaries, memories, and having met the families of previous partners.
‘I’m a relationship girly, so I’ve always sort of known the mothers,’ she explained. ‘And there were two names that I didn’t know from one-night stands that happened in the pandemic, so I got a private detective to help me find them.
‘I’ve always wanted a reason to hire a private detective. You’ve just heard me go on about obsession for half an hour – I’ve always wanted a reason, and I finally found one.’
She later discovered another name, bringing the tattoo’s current total to 15.
It would be easy to write the entire thing off as an exceptionally elaborate way of making 15 men panic every time their mothers call. But underneath the deliberately provocative headline – and Richardson is very aware of how provocative it is – there’s a more serious point about sex, memory and who gets to decide when an encounter matters.
Richardson deliberately chose not to tattoo the men’s names because, quite simply, she ‘deeply’ didn’t want a man’s name on her body.
Instead, she became increasingly fascinated by their mothers, women she believes may have experienced some of the same frustrations of loving the men she had.
‘Every single one of these people have played a role in your life, whether it was for an evening or four years,’ she said.
‘They were more sort of pivotal or poignant to me than any of the men were because I actually think that woman’s had a pretty similar experience to me.’
But there’s another motivation behind Temporary too: power.
