Chronologer (Chalk and Bone)

Animal bone and chalk

32cm  x  22cm x  9cm

The sculpture addresses time and change.

Our world is characterised by change; trees grow, fruit ripens and skin wrinkles. Yet it appears to us as stable and persisting.

Aristotle noticed that we do not recognise the objects that constitute our environment by their substance alone but also by their potentialities for change. He described these potentialities as the object’s ‘nature’, or ‘form’, and held that, for us, this ‘change-story’ was an integral part of the assimilated entity.

The changes that occur in our environment significantly adjust the meaning that we derive from the objects around us. Using fruit as an example, we can see that its edible state is preceded by its small, bitter and unripe state, and is quickly followed by the onset of decay and rot; as with many things, there is only a short duration when the fruit is useful. It is important for us to know when these moments are approaching and when they have arrived, so every moment of perception carries intuitive judgements, or ‘measurements’, concerning an encountered object’s position in its assimilated change-story. It is in our nature to perceive all objects in this way. We experience these subconscious measurements as ‘age’.

Of course, people change as well. We start as babies, grow into children and then adults, eventually becoming ‘old’. We ‘age’ like everything else.

When I made this sculpture, I wanted to show a figure that both measures and is measured. Like us, the sculpture grows wider as it grows taller. The arms are similarly structured but they are outstretched and evoke an act of measuring.