Relic

2022 Wood, acrylic paint, tin cans, copper leaf, glass, carbonised Subway ‘Italian B.M.T’ (R) sub One of the most astounding artefacts discovered at the site of ancient Pompeii is a batch of loaves, carbonised by a combination of pyroclastic blast and oxygen-starving ash deposit. The remains of Pompeiians found seeking sanctuary from the ravages of the Vesuvian blast on August 24th 79CE evoke an immediate sense of empathy. But it is the perfectly preserved items of daily life that engender a tangible sense of their lives and conscious being. Through the carbonised remains of wood, leather, grains and bread, a fleeting moment in time finds its own sanctuary. Relic is a twenty-first century re-enactment of a pyroclastic blast. Behind glass, and at the centre of a rectangular portable shrine or reliquary, decorated with colourful geometric forms, rests a carbonised Subway ‘Italian B.M.T.’ (R) Sub, preserved potentially for thousands of years by virtue of the carbonisation method. The achromatic carbon residue of the Sub contrasts with its gold and copper leaf inner sanctum and the brightly coloured outer portable shrine assemblage. The shrine, for exhibition and display purposes, sits upon a column of tin cans in an alternating pattern of yellow and silver. The tin can, in the context of this work, represents preservation and sanctuary from prolonged periods of food shortage. The column of cans is indicative of calibrations in time, akin to The Column of Trajan in Rome. The (C) and (R) symbols assert the language of commerce, which sits awkwardly with the implications of catastrophic combustion represented by the carbonised sandwich.