Here Viv explains the
work:
It
was finished in 2008 but I started in 2007. They are two huge pieces,
one weighs 45 kilograms, the other weighs 50 kilograms, and they are
worked in relation to each other. When I first started doing them I
dropped a dress size in a month because it was such hard work! It was
incredibly physical, and working big pieces is incredibly dynamic and
exciting. The lovely story about these is that I bought the two
pieces of stone separately, and then we had the house converted so I
could have a studio at home: the two pieces went away, were packed
away together, and they came out together, and obviously wanted to be
worked together. That is where I got the idea for a 'connection'
from. I had had the idea that the bigger one might be Horus, but I
didn't know much about Horus. I was doing an exhibition called
'Flights of Fantasy' which was about birds, and somehow Horus seemed
to fit in with this. And then everywhere I went there seemed to be
images of Horus; I went to a conference in Switzerland and there was
a 20 ft brightly coloured sculpture of Horus! So I then explored the
myth of Horus and found out about his relationship with Hathor his
Queen. Horus was in a battle with his brother Seth, Seth gouged his
eyes out, but Hathor bathed his eyes in milk and gave him back his
sight (which is why the eye of Horus is such a lucky symbol in
Egypt). The legend goes that Hathor his Queen takes him inside of her
every night and gives birth to him anew every morning. So in the
sculpture, Horus – the sun god – is giving rays of sun to Hathor
his Queen. Hathor has the Egyptian ankh
on her back, which is
the symbol of eternal life, because she is the one who is giving
birth to him again every morning. What is important is the gap
between them because the 'connection' is the tension between the
sculptures, so this space in the middle is important to me.
Viv
communicated this interaction beautifully. Approaching the sculpture
from one side Horus's face is outward looking and protective, while
from the other direction his eye looks directly into Hathor's face in
an intimate exchange. These sculptures are positioned on an area of
sand; this part of the gallery offers sight of a scene happening in a
world beyond the gallery. We are privileged to hold the sight of such
an exchange.
The
green alabaster stone has a different quality to other stones in the
exhibition and the size of the pieces have real gravitas. They are
like chess pieces or the Japanese netsuke sculptures: the forms are
ancient and yet – because of Vivien's vision for shaping –
utterly modern.
