'Velocivenator satiei'
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What if lobsters or large shrimp had evolved into fast-swimming hunters instead of creatures adapted to a life mainly on the seabed. What would they look like?
This sculpture, made between Nov 08 and Oct 09, is fairly closely based on
macruran decapods (creatures such as lobsters and shrimp) and their cousins
the stomatopods (mantis shrimp). Only wood without any dyes or stains has
been used to make it. All the woods used were either found after they had
already fallen or are recycled material that would otherwise have been thrown
away or burnt. They include:
Cocobolo and Pau amarillo from the scrap pile at a West Country wood merchants,
Juniper from a hill in the Lake District,
Mahogany from the counter of an old Post Office in Bow, London. My friend
Molly was born in the flat above,
Cherry from the waste pile at a guitar maker’s workshop in Devon, from
Highgate Park in Birmingham and also from a garden in Warwickshire,
Purpleheart and ebony scrap given to me by a cabinetmaker in Devon,
Tagua nut, an ivory-like nut that is a renewable rainforest resource from
Ecuador,
Holly and boxwood from Devon, courtesy of a tree surgeon friend,
Rose gum offcut from a builder’s skip in New South Wales, Australia,
Beech from the foot of the Totes Gebirge (‘Dead mountains’) in
the Austrian Alps,
Black poplar and walnut offcuts from a woodyard in Bristol,
Almond from near a village named San Pedro in Almeria, Spain.
The title means ‘Satie’s fast hunter’ in Latin. In 1913 the composer Erik Satie, who had a taste for the surreal, wrote a piano piece about the desiccated embryo of a hunting crustacean. The piece of music is a lot nicer than it sounds!