Life Preserver Sculptures

The symbolic motif of the wooden walking stick recurs in a considerable number of the artist’s works, eighteen of them within the present category.

Easily and cheaply available from second-hand stores, they may be seen as devices diametrically opposite those of popular, glossy commodities such as mobile phones and designer handbags. The latter are “items of choice”, but walking sticks are imposed by necessity, not vanity or fashion. They bear the physical traces of their former users, and carry the melancholy implication that such individuals are more likely deceased than recovered.

Here the sticks are integrated into complicated assemblies of brashly-coloured, highly-textured papier-mâché forms, within which these “life preservers” nevertheless maintain a central and enigmatic role.