Sacrum (i) & (ii)

Situated on either side of a small body of water two sculptures are in each other's sightlines. Thin aluminium sheets are hammered to billow and curve into shell-like panels of indecipherable forms. These forms are pierced, bolted and punctured by slender rusting arm-like rods. 

Sacrum(i) is closest to the water, the aluminium panel bows and drapes over the steel prong, which punctures and holds it, the steel emerges from the ground secured by a heavy steel bracket and bolts. It creates a cantilever, the tension of the curved steel arm causes the form to hover just above the ground and reflect itself in the water below. Held out like an offering, but withheld in its fixity.  Sacrum (ii), is the grounded counterweight to Sacrum (i), the sculpture's form emerged organically from the hammering process, left to curl and curve around the spherical tool it's hammered onto, it becomes a coiled shelter, wrapping itself around the steel spine. It caves to gravity, in the way its counterpart tries to resist. 

The sculptures seem to chase or contain light, draw it closer maybe, they're marked with all the transfers of energy from the hammer that shape and transform the material into a stronger but more brittle skeleton. The looping aluminium currents of its surface emerge like currents of electricity and water, channels and contours.

Research dissolves into the making; the idea of how we attribute meaning, hope, and desire onto an object to transform it, is parallel to the work. Previous research into objects and relics that have a certain kind of belief attached has continued with the sacrum. The pelvis bone is the strongest most stable part of our body, it supports our weight, is shaped like a shield and is usually the last part of us to remain. Ancient cultures across different geographies have separately come to similar myths and beliefs around its connection to an afterlife, it holds a lot physically and spiritually. It is a place of movement, aliveness, punctuated with holes for sacral nerves and blood vessels to flow through, described as ‘openings’.

- Rebecca Halliwell-Sutton

Images courtesy of Brooke Benington