A huggable fish trap, the result of mediative making during lockdown in 2020. This freestyle method of weaving rusty wire in the garden soothed me when so much else around me seemed madness.
The Fish Traps emerged during the isolation of 'lockdown'. Ideas of entrapment quarrelled with cocoons and being protected. We knew it was for the best but it still felt tough. I had been reminded of trips to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford - one of my favourite ethnographic collections - where I had seen bamboo and grass animal hunting traps exquisitely made.
Sitting in the garden amongst old rusty wire, I took some lengths of unruly wire and starting weaving containers for ceramic fish.
Woven iron wire with seven hand-made porcelain fish.
Currently on show in Time-Lapse at Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro.
72 x 40 diam. cm
1.6kg
Images: Robin Shelton Photography