Upright Island Friend (running bamboo, paramoudras corruption, not “Deep Siberian”) (2022).
Upright Island Friend (running bamboo, paramoudras corruption, not “Deep Siberian”) (2022) explores ecology, landscape, memory, symbolism, and time – a nexus of energetic frequencies between materials, questioning (inherited) colonial narratives.
Drilled, sewed bamboo tetrahedron, twine, stitched flint, limestone, and amethyst , silver bowl, water, three shells (from Dungeness).
Bamboo evokes early childhood memories of Saint Lucia. The country’s national plant holds multivalent ecological and culturally specific values across Caribbean and South East Asian cultures that I wanted to engage with.
I worked with shells, rocks, and miscellaneous fragments gathered from UK coast lines and forests, specially chosen because of the embodied resonances of their colour, form, and texture; the psychic state, energetic frequency, tone, and mood they induced; and their elemental composition and formation.
I wanted to play with different notions of time: geological time in the formation of flint and limestone; marine time in the formation of shells; and historical time, through ‘classical’ (Graeco-Roman) myths about amethyst.
In 1979 the colonial flag of St. Lucia was replaced with the cerulean blue field charged with a yellow triangle in front of a white-edged black arrowhead. However, some of the symbolism remains colonial.
I sewed bamboo tetrahedrons with twine, stitching around rocks and minerals, suspending these over water containing three shells. This sculpture enacts the dynamics at the heart of Bright Dynasty — nebulous relations meaningfully defining personhood.