INVERTED BOAT

2025 Sculpture

3.4 x 2.7 x 1.7 m

Inspired by Viktor Shklovsky’s theory of defamiliarisation - which sees poetry as a way of making familiar objects and situations strange again, breaking our automatic ways of seeing - I wanted to explore what might happen if this were applied to a cultural object of deep historical, theological and political significance: the boat.

Excerpts from exhibition text:

“Materials: pallets, fences, frankincense (essential oil).

Three materials that carry, contain. Each mediating a transition. Existing within systems of the economic, territorial, and spiritual. Here they collide, creating a form that typically contains us. However, through this inversion, the form rejects us. We exist outside, looking in at the matter contained - water, blackened.

“The kind of water you look in and find things about yourself” – Jonty.”

“The boat has long been a vessel of purpose – migration, exploration, conquest, trade. A controlled object made to navigate uncontrollable terrains. Yet, in this inversion, function, purpose, become unclear. Vehicle becomes void. A symbol of progress now directionless.”

“This boat is an object that visually fulfils and functionally refuses. Isn’t that interesting that something with seemingly no will, can refuse you.

What would an object look like if it refused both visual and functional expectations?”