“TALK”
The Unimagined Future
“TALK” - I read somewhere that words are strong.
That they can overwhelm what we fear, when fear seems more awful than life itself.
To many in my local community, the pandemic created that fear. Talking, a basic human need, was highlighted as a potentially missing element during the COVID-19 pandemic. “TALK” sets out to give hope. To re-align the value of talking as an invaluable part of community life, community togetherness, and an essential element in an uncertain future.
“TALK” is arranged to suggest the form of a word. The poles could, in theory, be spread flat; yet they are emphatically engaged with gravity, although flirting with a resemblance to people is never in doubt. The simple subject matter and cold colours can be seen as a reaction against the reflection hues and free expression of simple design.
The abstract shapes within, the composition are created entirely from disregarded components from York St John University’s freestanding pump action, COVID hand dispensers.
Spatially, the sculpture works in layers, which pinch together at some points and diverge at other points.
Like Morris’s minimalist sculptures of the mid-60’s, this dramatic, grid-like structure of inter-penetrating poles, consists of rigorously pared down geometric forms. Typically arranged into situations where one is aware of the ‘word’, the four forms, their surfaces producing complex and shifting interactions, instigating conversations, “TALK”.
It is said, that long ago, trees could “TALK” - their language has been lost - imagine our future without “TALK”.
John Cutting
2022