8.) Grown Up (Quennington)

Paul Tuppeny 2022

Polychrome copper and stainless steel

240cmH x 200cmW x 10cmD

We do not recognise the objects that constitute our environment by their substance alone but also by their potentialities for change. Aristotle described these potentialities as the object’s ‘nature’. Every moment of perception carries intuitive judgements, or ‘measurements’, concerning an encountered object’s position within its nature. We experience these subconscious measurements as ‘age’.

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

The sculpture describes a Being that both measures, and is measured by ‘age’. Like us, it grows wider as it grows taller. The arms are outstretched, measuring all the time.

The colours of the sculpture at Quennington are taken from the changing colours of leaves as they get older. As the year progresses, different bands of colour recede and blend into the background landscape. They are saturated and applied in bands evoking a measuring rod or ruler.