Bronze sculptural installation
Andrew Lacey 2024
This is a sculptural meditation on object and material re-appropriation, destruction, healing and peace. Heddwch means peace in Welsh.
The horse in this installation was created during a time of personal struggle. It was initially commissioned for two partnering groups. The relationship between these groups proved to be toxic and I was caught in the middle. I decided to step back from the project and the horse came with me. Over a number of years the horse was reworked through intense sessions in the studio only to be rejected and put to the back of my mind. This process was repeated many times over the years. Other sculptures were created and released into the world while the horse lingered stubbornly to the darker corners of the studio. On reflection, this constant re-working of the horse was the re-working of myself and a healing of the toxicity from which we had both been born. The horse is present, patient and still. It represents the essence of peace amidst woe, a sense of steadiness when all seems lost.
The bell was originally conceived as a timely response to America's 'Liberty Bell’. It was cast with a fracture and shot with a sniper rifle, creating a weak and fragile voice, emblematic of the fragility of democracy and social freedom. It was later melted down and re-cast into the current bell here called The Fire Next Time after James Baldwin’s seminal work of the same title. This powerful text was written as two letters to his nephew on the 100th anniversary of the emancipation of Black America. It speaks of a broad outlook on the African-American experience, of freedom, resilience and liberty. On the bell are lines taken from Baldwin’s letters.
‘God gave Noah the rainbow sign
No more water but fire next time’.
‘The very time I thought I was lost
My dungeon shook and my chains fell off’.
Each time the bell is rung these words are sent into the world.
Both the horse and the bell in this installation have been created using historical methods of casting from the medieval and renaissance periods. The wax models were made with beeswax and pine resin; the casting mould from clay, hair, and brick dust; the bronze from gathered and recycled metals, previous casts, industrial waste, bullet and mortar shells. With these ingredients the modern day aesthetic for purity and precision has been exchanged for the rich vigour and marks left by the casting process of a different time. Their facture also reflects mutability of the material that can be cast and re-cast almost endlessly. While the recycling of bronze can be seen as environmentally positive, there is also a darker thread which follows the historic argument that conflict can be the catalyst for the destruction of culturally important objects both by the oppressor and the oppressed. An example of his happened in 1674 when the great bell of Messina Cathedral, Sicily was destroyed in an act of vengeance against the city of Messina. A few years later that metal was cast into Giacomo Serpotta’s equestrian monument to Carlos II. This in turn was destroyed by a revolutionary mob in 1848 and melted down to make cannons ‘in defence of liberty’. Bronze carries with it a tincture of every form it has ever been.
The Influence of the Casting Process
I cast all my own work and have always viewed the casting process as an exciting collaborator. Bronze casting is essentially an act of multiple reproductions from an original model into a final bronze form. Each stage reproduces the exact imprint or memory of this original form, from positive to negative and back again as many times as is needed to translate every detail faithfully. Even when under the extreme physical stress of rapid heating and high pressure that occur at different stages, the crisp lively details of the artist’s model remain unaltered. Every exquisite imprint in the surface of the model must be noticed and remembered. The final bronze, having been reproduced through the multiple stages of the casting process should retain all of the vigour and brilliance of the original.
The choreography of the casting process has become another important influence for me. The body-memory actions so central to the casting process have become part of the performance that is embodied in the final sculpture. Anyone watching bronze being poured will witness a silent dance that has been played out over thousands of years.
© Andrew Lacey 2024