The time of the father
Lara Bell
University of the West of England Bristol
Materials remember. The sickle carries the violence to Cronus, while steel carries us into the Industrial Revolution, when time became measurable, and productivity a measure of human worth. Above this is a 3D-printed Honda fuel tank: a Futurist head, two vulvic openings, modernity’s promise and its wound. Four metres tall, three metres wide, the sculpture seems to lurch from some buried evolutionary past, one leg folded like a dead spider, beautiful, eerily erotic, and failing, dragging itself towards us. The film gives this body a shadow. Icarus burns inside belonging; Apollo fractures time; Cassandra's curse means she speaks unheard. In making it, I discovered the patriarchy living in my own body: ambition, exhaustion, mastery. This is my monument to survivors of violence -and to the collective demons we must recognise as our own.