Full Fathom Five - digital composite - 2020
This is at least the third piece titled ‘Full Fathom Five’ that I’ve made over the last couple of years. An idea I keep returning to, it’s based on this piece of text from Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’:
Full fathom five thy father lies.
Of his bones are coral made.
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell
The idea of impermanence versus continuity is what engages me. The body has sunk more than thirty feet down. In the dark depths, it has become completely transformed. The constituent parts: eyes, bones, etc. are gone and yet the form of the body remains: transmuted through a sea-change.
Full Fathom Five 2020 - detail view