VIGA SERIES: VIGA 3             

The sculptures in the Viga Series are made from old ceiling joists salvaged from a 15th century house in the centre of Palma de Mallorca, Spain. Encrusted with synthetic mineral-like growths, they are a palimpsest of human industry through the ages. 

The notches carved to accommodate other beams; the old twisted nails; the splashes of paint; the insect boreholes and worn-down ends, all hint at a rich history of utilitarian function and the many lives lived beneath them. They are a record of human construction from a time before plastics were invented, when everything would have been built and carved by hand. Now stripped from their place and deprived of their raison d’être, they have become odd artefacts, disassociated from their original context and historical purpose. 

I imagined a future where these beams might reemerge - a time where our present era would be ancient history and all the material innovations of our time had become assimilated with and indistinguishable from nature. A flattening of human history into a single era - the Anthropocene - where synthetic minerals and inorganic deposits grow in and on natural materials. The Viga sculptures are an amalgam of the natural and the manmade, their totemic appearance dispassionately assessing the legacy of the human epoch.

Approximate dimensions:
Viga 1
H: 2330 mm  -  W: 450 mm  -  D: 450 mm

Viga 2
H: 1350 mm  -   W: 450 mm  -  D: 450 mm

Viga 3
H: 1710 mm  -  W: 450 mm  -  D: 450 mm

Viga 4
H: 2420 mm  -   W: 450 mm  -  D: 450 mm

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Photography: Tom Price