For several years my art has developed around temporal themes drawn from an interest in museums and memorials, and the way that we present our species to ourselves through the display of material culture; the social motivations that underlie this behaviour seem to address an innate identity of self that transcends the individual and the now.

The artworks are political, conceived to deliver a ‘message’, which they convey through a visual language developed from ongoing investigations into the embedded temporal and historic qualities of materials. Works are generally of three dimensions but on occasion incorporate two-dimensional elements as a means of introducing external images into the installation.

The work proposed for The Elemental Sculpture Park, ‘Stump (Three)’, forms part of a series that has developed from the ‘Pinned Limb’ works selected for the National Sculpture Prize in 2016 and exhibited at Fresh Air in 2017. These works sought to evoke the sense of a “future past”, presenting reconstructed metallic imprints of branches which accentuate the absence of the origin living form.

Stump (Three) represents a continuation of some of these themes but, in this instance, taking the form of a single three-metre bronze post. The perfectly straight pole resonates with the organic forms of surrounding vegetation. The apparent simplicity of the form from a distance however, disguises the complexities of its surface which carries the signifiers of decay associated with its living (and dying) arboreal counterparts. The surface patination of the bronze further emulates aspects of the organic world through its variegated green colour, although the metallic shift of the green perhaps has the effect of emphasising the schism that exists between our species and that world.

The monumental form of the work takes inspiration from the remains of Delphi’s Platean Tripod (now situated in Istanbul) and the fourth century King Chandra’s iron column in Delhi.