Artworks2015PSION (Gold and Blue)

The artist has referred to this work as part of a series of work known as the ‘Prometheus Series’, referring to this most elusive, heroic and abject of the Greek myths. Prometheus was the god who gave Humans the gift of fire that he stole from Mount Olympus to give to his Shelleyan Protégées.  For the well meaning and philanthropic opening of this particular Pandora’s box our hero was punished by the most gruesome of mortal punishments on an immortal daily basis.  On first glance the work appears, like a gemstone, tantalising the intellect like the visual illusions of Larry Bell or Dan Graham. But through the diachronic shimmer and reflections emerge a carefully placed tableaux: the detritus of our manic consumer age. These collections of the rusted, deteriorated evidence of our contemporary world have a totem like aura, trapped as they are behind glass. The icons of our secular age now worshipped like the religious relics of the Catholics, the shrines of the Greco-Romans or the talismans and totems of the indigenous ancients.  Gavin Turk, June 2017