The Middle World

The Middle World is a large and highly complex sculptural installation created over twenty years. It consists of seventy separate small bronze and terracotta figures, arranged upon a 3m tall vessel that is part altar, part pinball machine. The sculpture is cast in steel reinforced cement. The work describes a limbo state. It is the meeting place, a waiting room, the still procession where life and death, joy and despair, light and darkness intersect as chaotic disorder. Where time, place and all form of definition become valueless and are thrown out of context. Using references from different centuries and ages, the past is merged with the present to create a sense of unease. Vulcan bombers and satellites appear alongside Christian and pagan symbolism. The work occupies the twilight zone of the human consciousness, a hinterland where both real and unreal co- exist. It was 1987 when I saw for the first time Tours great cathedral, I was awe struck by a profound feeling of one’s own mortality. This was perhaps the starting point for this project.