Connection, 2007, English Alabaster

By far the most substantial work in the show, Connection should be the central jewel of the exhibition, and it is only because of the strength of the rest of the work that I cannot in all honestly state this to be the case. However, the poignancy of the work requires we visitors to view the piece in complete isolation from the room around; this work is about a kind of life-line through love, and the intimacy between the characters demands our attention.

 

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.