COPPER GRIPS
Copper Grips, 2025
Salvaged copper
Copper Grips is a series of sculptures cast from the negative space of my hand’s grip. Using wax to create the initial forms, the work records my working hand, and the variable strength it applies during daily manual labours.
The intention of the grips is that they be held rather than viewed only. I would like people to feel their weight, and in being able to feel that, be activated by it.
Cast from salvaged pipe using the lost wax process, the works imagine raw lumps of copper that I could fantastically reach into the ground and draw out with my hand. This seemingly impossible vision reflects my cultural relationship to the land of Kernow/ Cornwall. The work also seeks to bridge a gap between the local and global legacy of industrial mining, the intimate scale of human labour and its psychological and bodily impact.
“Working with copper I think of the alchemical qualities of this material, as a connector between the past, contemporary life, and the future, sharing my personal relationship to my cultural identity and drawing attention to the endurance of extraction industries, which continue to demand intensive processes and hand labour.” Sovay Berriman
Photo credit: Sovay Berriman and Rachael Jones