Pocketfuls of gold…………….bucketfuls of sorrow”

Willoughby Sculpture Prize, Burly Griffin Incinerator – Sydney

The Sculpture is on site until April 30 2012.

(5 Small Street. Willoughby)

 

“In a time beyond seeing, guided by what is not said, I found these textured time wrapped bins. They were lying down, whispering their secrets into the quiet scarred ground.

………………………………… Now as shining guests they see the sunset, the crust of their silence broken as a fresh breeze flames the shadows of these forgotten things” – Ingrid Morley

 

Background

“POCKETFULS OF GOLD…………………….BUCKETFULS OF SORROW”

I came across these industrial hopper bins where they had lain for 56 years, in an abandoned copper mine near Oberon, NSW. Their visual power and mysterious presence in this awe inspiring landscape characterised, to me, the ambiguous relationship between the productive and destructive processes associated with mining and industry.

Once recovered the hoppers were in terrible shape, the left side particularly had disintergrated and structurally failed. I nearly abandoned them.  The restoration involved finding, fetching, selecting, cutting, welding and modelling materials to strengthen and match the existing form of weathered steel.

My intervention of the “handle” suggests the more menacing aspect of the mining process, a big knife – a big corporation. My intention is to provoke questions about what we destroy in order to produce.