"systems of healing"
"systems of healing" has been fully installed twice. Its full install is made of a double sided wall 8' x 16' x 4' deep with 8 magnifying viewers either side, behind each viewer is a small sculpture. These sculptures are fragile, their roots are personal and the method of display plays an integral part in their understanding by allowing only one person at a time to view each work. This opens a private discourse between me and the viewer, each piece is a solitary experience like a whisper or a secret. The sculptures have been made from materials chosen for their inherent nature and associated symbolism including sheet and punched metal, swarf, pods, bandage, plaster, wool, feathers, silk thread, staples, nails, hair, wax and pins. The installation aims to sculpturally articulate pain, vulnerability, fragility, healing, growth, repair and remembrance in a cathartic yet positive expression. It has also been shown several in a reduced format as a plinth containing three of the pieces.
Some of the small sculptures from the work.
As a sculptor of larger pieces, creating fine, delicate, ephemeral work was almost meditative.
photographs taken through the viewers in the installation
"string theory" (I pull a thread...)
A performance piece. "The knitting was done by my dear Mum who added twists and patterns to show that life is never simple. After she died suddenly the work took on an even more poignant tone. The piece speaks of memories in shadows cast by the work, the physical act of creation disappearing as the knitting is undone."
Essence III
In one of my pieces, cascades of tea bags hang like long chandeliers; my concept being that as the tea becomes part of the drinker, the spent tea bag becomes symbolic of that moment, the essence of the tea transformed into a memory of the experience. The dried tea bags represent fragments of life, capturing those points in time. They are all from cups I have drunk myself over a cascade of years.