Pharaoh Overlord,

Walnut, cardboard, paint
17cm x 7cm x 13cm

My idea of making sculpture is that it’s possible to charge materials with a sort of low-fi power - When you invest enough energy into making an object it can acquire a special sort of resonance. With this in mind I chose a particular piece of cardboard pulp packaging, cut into it and coated it with multiple layers of emulsion and spray paint to give a ‘fake bronze’ patina. I wanted to shift the materiality away from the discarded, humble beginnings elevating it into a surface more associated with longevity and authority.

This work is part of an ongoing series of wall based sculptures which stem from a curiosity about the design of symbols and how we are encouraged to interpret and perceive objects that make up our surroundings. I became fixated on the (near impossible) idea of trying to design warning markers for nuclear waste sites that carry a potential risk over 10,000 years into the future, where our current languages and cultures are completely obsolete. However unlike most existing symbols, which are designed to associate with a linear meaning or message I am making hybrid sculptural objects which explore combinations of broad influences, and therefore act like signposts pointing in multiple opposing directions all at once, all imbued with curious references and connotations.