Fragile and Precious.

Thirty ‘gold bowls’ installed in Harpenden Methodist Church as part of Harpenden Arts Festival 2018.

The promenade stage was set up for a drama production to take place during the evening but would otherwise be empty. Any installation needed to be easily taken down and reinstalled each day. There was a great deal of visual distraction, with pews replaced by chairs around the stage and with large floral displays at the altar end. Despite all this to not take up the challenge would have been a wasted opportunity.

The Assyrian exhibition* at the British Museum prompted me to look at a story in the book of Ezra* where Israelites, exiled to Babylon, returned to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem bringing with them temple treasures ransacked by Nebuchadnezzar. Among the treasures were thirty gold bowls.

The bowls I chose to make whilst ‘precious’ were also fragile and imperfect.

The last image below will link through to a series of prints made following this work.

*I am Ashurbanipal *Ezra 1: 1-6:22