Neil Hedger

The work engages with two main themes within the tradition of sculpture: that the object is the most tangible (physically present) presentation of an (intangible) idea; and that the erection of a sculpture is in itself a form of glorification of such an idea. The desire to set something in stone seems to have a direct correlation to its temporality regarding meaning, in the sense that its meaning begins to evaporate through the passage of time and that this effects the objectification of such a thing as an individual encounter. Critically the work is influenced by the reading of George Bataille, in particular his essay The Obelisk (1938) where the text suggests the replacement of the deified entity by the object itself: a re-identification process that includes and conceals the death of the originary object. Bataille posits a feeling of human irrelevance as the starting point for human meaning and thereby this need to elevate and deify itself. He relates this to the erection of the memorial object. …the surest and most durable obstacle to the drifting away of all things... necessary for man to set the most stable limits on the deleterious movement of time... The very stone that earlier had sought to limit storms is nothing more than a milestone marking the immensity of an unlimitable catastrophe (Bataille 1938, 215-217), and by doing so suggests the use of this glorifying practice to celebrate the ignobility of humanity. The work extends this to the tradition of figurative sculpture as a whole, and looks for a contemporary vehicle for such a practice.