Factory Barge 041

Product description

My sculptures are often based on landscape themes, including natural disaster. This carved work inspired by the recent floods in and around Todmorden, when a tsunami of water crashed over Lock 18 gates, and barges broke their moorings, careering toward catastrophe.

I use representations of boats as a metaphor for feelings of insecurity and helplessness. Whilst on a boat you are aware of its size and mass, and it still seems to me amazing that something so huge and heavy floats at all. I know the science that keeps it from sinking but it still seems wrong that hundred of tons of boat can float. Sometimes they don't!
Global warming seems to be part of our life, and floods are going to be something we live with on our ark/planet for the foreseeable future.
I take comfort in the thought that even when we make a complete mess of our ark/planet and make it uninhabitable for our species nature will heal our mistakes. It may take hundreds of thousands of years but one day the ants or the cockroaches or one of the other species that apparently know how to survive a holocaust will inherit a wonderful planet. I hope they know how to build arks and show more sense than mankind ever did.