Choked, the room muffled in a vast mass of shaved wool. A flock of fur that wads light and smothers close to both ceiling and floor. The dense curled weight of animal scent muttons and blocks the generosity of volume. A store house; a barn of hair.

But we are not given this oppressive glut, at least not directly. In its place is a bare interior, northern and silent. But we are not given even that, it is suggested as if a cold and vacant dark were held at bay by the only object in the room.

A lamp an elegant rural focus tall in glass paraffin, a brass bell of home to moth the family close in whispers and stories. But we are not given this warmth, it is made of something else, a compacted single material, punched and turned hard in a factory hand.

Its nuzzling flesh is known from machine tools; porous and rigid, heads and cones on smalll metal stems that spindle to polish against
resistant sullen matter. Here the flesh is quiet, unmoving and blind,our hopes and fears illuminated in its locked compression.

BRIAN CATLING 1992