Scale model

The upward point indicates a longing: flying, sailing, breaking free from the wheels, landing back on them safely and rolling further along? What does it opt for? The forward movement has intentionally been represented archaically. With a little imagination it could be seen as the mode of movement or the Egyptians or the builders of megalithic sites. The wooden planks of the bottom and top are rhythmically open-closed, open-closed, like the ‘staff notes’ in a poem' from 'Squarings' -Lightenings- by Seamus Heaney on which this sculpture is based:

   ‘A boat that did not rock or wobble once                                                                                
   Sat in long grass one Sunday afternoon                                                                                    
   In nineteen forty-one or -two. The heat

   Out on Lough Neagh and in where cattle stood
   Jostling and skittering near the hedge
   Grew redolent of the tweed skirt and tweed sleeve

   I nursed on. I remember little treble
   Timber-notes their smart heels struck from planks,
   Me cradled in an elbow like a secret

   Open now as the eye of heaven was then
   Above three sisters talking, talking steady
   In a boat the ground still falls and falls from under.’