Here’s another piece I’m planning for the upcoming wilderness exhibition. I’m not sure whether it will work or not, if not you can be witness to my failure (see if I care!).

I’m in the process of making 40 figures in clay. Leaving the clay soft, rather than allowing it to harden they will then be sent out into the world. I will leave them in and around Sheffield, out in the open, totally exposed for forty days. In the city, the suburbs and the countryside; some for all to see, others hidden away.

I don’t know what I’ll find after the forty days – maybe they will all survive intact or be washed away by the rain, or stolen, or cleared away by a street sweeper, or trodden on. They will be at the mercy of the world.

This is a photo of the first batch:

I feel quite attached to them now, strange how we have an innate instinct to see personality in inanimate objects (a quirk in the way our brains work that probably led to belief in god – but that’s another story). Perhaps it was a mistake to give them faces, like naming an animal that you will soon slaughter for food. Nevertheless, I will overcome my paternal instincts and send them out on their adventures.

 Go well, children of clay, and may some of you return in one piece…