Reverence

PEAK EXPERIENCE

2025

25cm x 20cm x 20cm

Hallmarked, fine, recycled, patinated silver (sealed against tarnishing); salvaged iron and river flotsam wood (both treated and sealed); cotton.

Young, old; religious, spiritual, agnostic or atheist; our response to Mother Nature's grand creations is so often to throw our heads back and spread our arms out wide.

This universal expression of pure joy seems innocently simple but has deeper layers of significance - it is a position of ultimate vulnerability, with the heart and throat unprotected, offering complete trust in the safety of the experience. It is a salutation not only to nature's magnificence but also to the sense of freedom it inspires in us - in that moment of exultation, nothing else matters. And everything is possible.

I found this beautifully shaped, thick, rusty wire, draped over a cross outside a Chapel of St Anne high above a mountain village in the French Alps. The tiny chapel looks out to majestic peaks and glaciers, and having this bent old thing hung randomly over the cross didn't seem right, so I lifted it off. Whilst thinking about where else to put it, away from the path (actually, back on the cross was looking quite good at this stage!), I was compelled to attach it to my backpack and use it to embody our universal urge to surrender to magnificence.

The wood I found on the bank of a snow-melt river in the valley below and it is trussed to the iron with a "gods-eye" knot, which seemed appropriate. The silver I created by crocheting fine silver wire that I then further embellished with silver clay (which becomes fine silver on firing), and applied patina. Because it is a large piece of precious metal, it required hallmarking, by law.

Finding the perfect arrangement and location for the silver on the iron took some time, but I'm very pleased with where it eventually settled - as if it was whipped away and wrapped around a post by the wind. A symbol, perhaps, of shedding old skins.

Peak Experience 360 View with original audio

The sound for this video* is my own composition and is performed on a Gu Zheng - a Chinese stringed instrument that is traditionally plucked and strummed, but I have instead struck the strings with a found metal implement.

A "temple" sound seemed appropriate for this video and the Gu Zheng, with its pentatonic scale and deep resonance is perfect for this, but I wanted to create a contemplative mood in a new way that was entirely my own. What I liked about the metal implement I used, was the way it "bounced" on the strings, creating that lovely reverberation at the ends of the notes. I chose the strings in the highest registers to reflect the heights of the "peak experience" embodied in this work and the mountains and the chapel that inspired it. This was my first attempt at composing, performing, recording and editing sounds and it was so exciting! I will definitely be doing more of this.

* Video recorded on Samsung Galaxy s25 Ultra, edited with Samsung editing, VideoPad and InShot. Music recorded and edited in WavePad.