Natwest Tower / Winter of Discontent Sculpture

Edition 1/15 From a series of 12 perforated metal sculptures based on buildings of record-breaking height – each of which also coincided with a major financial crisis. This theory, ‘THE SKYSCRAPER INDEX’, indicates that buildings are manifestations of absurd, irrational and egotistical impulses. At its essence, the series frames contemporary economic ideologies as a mystery religion. Tall buildings have always represented society’s most powerful interests. For example, Mesopotamian ziggurats or Egyptian pyramids were dedicated to cults of fertility or kingship, whereas during the Industrial Revolution church spires were eclipsed by mill and factory chimneys. Skyscrapers today represent the dominance of financial / economic thought in contemporary society. But despite their rational-looking exteriors, perhaps the activities inside these buildings are not so different from those within an ancient temple – mysteries, expressed through algorithms and tax codes – the sacrificial goat, replaced by the dismembering of the Welfare State to the gods of economic growth. Recalling Paolozzi’s machine sculptures, the perforated metal alludes to electronic hardware (server cabinets, cable trunking), but also a heritage of esotericism and mystic religion (Aztec breastplates, French tarot cards, Jain cosmologies) – creating objects that are both familiar and strange, everyday and incomprehensible.