Warrior's Lament 2022

WARRIORS LAMENT. 2022

Dimensions: 112 X 67 X 42cm

Medium: Painted wood.

I cannot help but bring to mind Wilfred Owen’s war poem ‘Strange Meeting’ when meditating on this portal.

On the arena-like threshold of this portal, with a raised circular platform in the middle, there are two identical right-hand gloves. The one glove is painted yellow on the outside and red in the inside while the other is painted the exact opposite of that. Despite their likeness there is a feeling of irreconcilable tension between the two gloves! Why is this so?

At some stage the viewer will become aware of two other twin-forms that will determine the outcome of the two gloves. The one being the imposing X-shape that consists of two identical forms and the other is the hourglass with its two identical halves converging in the middle.

The emboldened X-shape, with all its aesthetic considerations, is there first and foremost to distract the viewer from looking through the horizontally positioned hourglass and secondly, should the viewer be foolish enough to look through the hourglass, it is there to try and negate what is sure to happen next.

However, human nature being what it is, the viewer, looking from one end of the hourglass to the other, might mistake the end that they look through as representing a fullness of time that speaks of their well-being. This sense of a superior well-being is reinforced when what they see through the small aperture of the neck of the hourglass will be of a false, constricted impression of what is happening on the other side. It is then that the viewer, with a condescending bravado, again not heeding the warning of the X-shape, reaches out to engage with the gloves in the arena-like threshold, initiating an infernal discontent deep within the psyche of the viewer exacerbated by there being two right hand gloves!