Steel pliers, ceramic head, magnet. 15x15x1cm August 2024
An anthropomorphic sculpture composed of a pair of pliers to which a ceramic head has been attached.
I made the head about thirty years ago in around 1994.
I call the piece Homo Habilis after the extinct species of human that lived in Eastern and Southern Africa about two million years ago. Homo Habilis literally means Handy Man, which in my piece nicely links to the handyman’s tool, the pliers. Homo Habilis is also referred to as ‘Man the Toolmaker’, which links equally nicely with the piece.
A ceramic pot with a bicycle saddle. The bicycle saddle is attached to a conventional bicycle seat pillar which is inserted into the narrow opening at the top of the ceramic vessel.
In the context of the sculpture the shape of the bike seat automatically evokes the form of an animal head.
Whenever the words bicycle seat, animal head and art are mentioned in the same sentence the name of Pablo Picasso and his 1942 work, Bull’s Head, inevitably come to mind. But we mustn’t let the great man’s work prevent the rest of us from using the same idea. He probably wasn’t the first person to think it up anyway, just the most famous. Remember, it was him who said “Good artists copy. Great artists steal”
In my sculpture the bicycle saddle doesn’t only suggest an animal head. Something about its shape also evokes the concept of a sail or of some form of crest shaped modern architectural structure.
Below is a variation of the sculpture where I’ve cleaved the saddle firmly to its animal head incarnation by adding a pair of headphones. The headphones have the pleasing effect of looking like a weird pair of eyes as well as a pair of headphones. The idea of adding the headphones came to me simply because there was pair of headphones lying on the floor next to the sculpture.
A cluster of organic forms, possibly resembling aquatic lifeforms. The small indentations in the top of some of the cones adds to the organic effect. The worm-like appearance of the cones makes them a slightly disturbing.
A ceramic sculpture that is slightly suggestive of a fungus such as a stinkhorn, although the work was conceived as a purely abstract sculpture.
Below is a view of the sculpture from above, in directional lighting. This view shows well the dramatic differences that differing viewpoints can make when viewing three dimensional artwork (or anything else for that matter). .
A group of works composed of clusters of coloured ceramic cone-like forms. The forms are individually rolled by hand as cones and are then distorted to create a sinuous waving effect. The forms were conceived as purely abstract, however they have an organic feel to them with something of the suggestion of marine or aquatic organisms. They could be worm-like creatures emerging from the sea bed and waving in the ocean currents.
The ceramic head in this sculpture is held in the jaws of the spanner by a thin wooden rod that forms the head’s neck. It is uncertain whether the head is trapped in the jaws of the spanner or whether the head and the spanner form a single entity, with the spanner as the body (The shape of the spanner suggests a seated or crouching body). It could be interpreted that the head in the sculpture represents the thinking part of the person, while the spanner represents the physical body of the person, the thinking part thus being clamped (possibly against its will) to the physical part. This could have metaphysical connotations or connotations invoking the expression “born in the wrong body”. This tension of ambiguity of meaning is one of the things I like about the piece. Workshop tools and handyman tools such as spanners, hammers and pliers are a recurring feature of my small scale sculptural work.
