Putting Off The
Inevitable and Slow History
Paul Needham’s miniature twisted coffins have a similarly
absurd relationship with our models of the world. The dysfunctional
comic book coffins seem to fail as sculptural memento mori since
they lack the necessary pathos. At the same time, it’s this
dead pan quality that makes them a particularly sharp satire on
the inevitability of death.
Slow history – a lump of coal sculpted into the shape of
a tree – accelerates entropic geological time to breakneck
speed, deliberately trivialising the passage of time. Trees grow,
die and turn into coal, just as people live, die and return physically
to the earth. In Needham’s art, the circular path of history
is inevitable and unstoppable, but our knowledge of this is both
comforting and humourous.
Indeed, Slow History demonstrates that, outside human conceptions
of time, death isn’t destructive; it is part of a greater
cycle of birth, growth and death.
Extract from exhibition essay by curator Dr Neil Mulholland
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