Inheritance
2012
Cast lead, silk chiffon
Size variable
Box I
2012
Cast lead
90 x 45 x 34mm
Box II
2012
Cast lead
159 x 55 27mm
A box cast in lead.
Palm-sized, it asks to be carried
about, but it weighs you down. Its heft belies a softness and vulnerability.
It stands in for the hereditary, for
heirlooms passed down through generations. And the shadow looks like genes,
like some sort of umbilical DNA. A guilty stain that admits too much.
Cast, it becomes a generation of itself,
reproduced and re-created with failings each time.
The clasp suggests that it is locked,
that it contains secrets, something shameful or precious.
Sealed shut, coffin like, it talks
about containment, concealment, secrecy, repression and not being able to
forget.
It sits as a relic: a fetish of family
life.
Boxes
2012
Cast iron
90 x 45 x 34mm
159 x 55 27mm