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.
Cast from salvaged copper using variable pressure, the resulting forms create imagined raw lumps of copper - reflecting the heritage, culture and relationship to land of Kernow. The work seeks to bridge a gap between the local and global legacy of industrial mining and the intimate scale of human labour.
“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