“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
The Song of Aragorn, in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, for me has always spoken of a great sense of renewal. That the things of this world that are strong and deep, the good things, exist and maintain, even through great hardship, or long, far away wanderings, through the warming of the earth and its great ice ages. That after a state of flux, from the ashes a new fire can be lit.
In this work, the interplay of rust and gold reminds us that while some things corrode, and fall to dust, others remain, strong and old, like gold. The dots, radiating out from the centre of the beast, speak to the inescapable, cyclical nature of death, decay and rebirth.
Many eons before us, different life forms ruled this planet, dinosaurs and Wollemi Pines, ancient aliens or vengeful, unruly Gods of Harvest. And eons after us, others will take the mantle, building their own great pyramids to new gods and reaching for the stars. Until then, I hope we find a better parley between humanity and nature, that while we incessantly crash into the ‘new’, we can also pay mind to ‘renew’ that which is broken.