TOLLE LEGE
Lime wood carving of St Augustine and a Lobster with an illuminated journal, duck themed church kneeler. 2025. 1.7 x 1.2 x 1.2 metres.
A concordance regarding the somewhat gnomic contents of the ledger is available to read below, and hard copies will be available promptly.
I am still somewhat perplexed about this piece. I had no interest in St Augustine prior to drawing the postcard (shown below). Why was he in bed with a lobster? Still no clue. Originally conceived as one part of triptych of three dimensional works inspired by Hieronymous Bosch's Garden Of Earthly Delights, I chose to focus on the central panel. The other two parts looked at Jean Luc Godard's film Pierrot Le Fou, and the current Israeli genocide in Gaza, Palestine.
It was something of a surprise during the work that the first Augustinian pope was to be elected. I began to wonder if there was something in the air. There were a number of other coincidences which might be read as portents, if you were that way inclined. I survived an assassination attempt by Martin Luther. I don't know. By the time I had finished writing the concordance, I was rather frazzled by the subject. It seemed to be about everything I had ever thought, some kind of self-portrait. Should you be interested in acquiring the piece, it has a price tag of £27,750, which is not cheap. Make me an offer, but no tyre kickers please.
This is a rough rotate around the sculpture in the photo studio where the above snap was taken. You can see round the back, but not underneath.
Some detail photographs:
I was wondering whether there had been enough publicity for the Degree Show, so I printed out some fliers and went to pass them out around the city. Instead of targeting the café's and other places that would see a large footfall, I decided to write the title of the project, Tolle Lege, on a map of the city and then post fliers through the doors of houses I found on the route.
The following are pages photographed of the ledger, which is bolted to the bed, which extra commentary on the decisions about what went into the book. The ledger is available to purchase for £45 in the shop in the Locksbrook Road building, or here in the shop afterwards.
This is a video the pop singer Dua Lipa posted on her instagram. I like Dua Lipa. She was in a cafe in Cornwall when the Sunset Lexicon exhibition was on. I was in the queue behind her and had my book from the exhibition which had a photograph of her as a mermaid in the film Barbie on one of the pages concerning the paintings on the wall in Breage church. I should have taken the opportunity to invite her to the exhibition but the previous night I had drunk several bottles of Delirium beer which is about 15% and I was feeling sick. Anyway, this photo is from when Dua Lipa went to the Prado. I have included a photo below that of when I went to the Prado. I shouldn't have taken the picture as there was a woman screaming at everyone to stop photographing, something which I do not imagine Ms Lipa had to endure.
As an offshoot to the pages in the ledger, I made a sign. This was MDF board approximately 2.5 metres wide, with 26 varnished gouache paintings of the selected images from the Garden of Earthly Delights that were selected to make the cipher, with the symbol and Roman alphabet characters laser cut in white gloss acrylic beneath.
