Contemplation is an invitation to move beyond the mundane and to step out of time - to attain a larger perspective on the physical constraints of our existence.

The Symbolism
The form draws on Tibetan Buddhist prayer wheels, though the version I knew first was smaller and closer to home, part of the devotional landscape I grew up inside. Traditionally, the wheel is spun clockwise, following the direction of the sun - each turn understood as a repetition of prayer, a small accumulation of merit set in motion by the hand.

There's a reason for the pair. Two stood together says something one alone cannot: light and dark, material and immaterial, the many dualities that run through a life. Two pillars, standing together, each turning on its own axis - not resolved into one, but held side by side.

The Object
Contemplation began with two bare textile rolls, found on the Chelsea campus. They were exactly the right size and weight - heavy enough to carry the presence I wanted. I knew from the start that the piece needed to be large. Scale was not decoration; it was the argument. If this was going to be a work about the material world, the material itself had to insist on being felt - something you register with your body before you understand it with your mind.

The Making
The surface went through several versions before I landed on silver foil: a metal, and so symbolically weighted the way gold would be, but deliberately not gold. Silver keeps the piece a step removed from wealth, offering, or currency - closer to something quieter, more contemplative.

Making it turn was a separate concern. The rotational mechanism was custom-built with help from the metal workshop at Chelsea. I designed the metal components myself, then worked with the workshop to engineer a device that could carry the weight of the rolls and still turn smoothly under a single hand.

The Site
Placement mattered as much as construction. At the exhibition, I found a spot between two doorways, beside a window - a threshold within a threshold. The piece stood in passage space, somewhere between rooms, catching the light that came through the glass. Visitors encountered it not as a destination but as something in their path, something they had to move around or reach out and turn as they passed through.

Material and Immaterial
At its core, Contemplation asks a single question: how, or if, the material can connect us to the immaterial, and thus to the divine. Religious ritual has long given meaning to physical objects: beads, wheels, icons, incense. This piece borrows that logic without claiming any one tradition's answer. The textile rolls, the silver, the custom-turned metal - all of it is simply matter, until a hand reaches out and sets it moving.

By touching and turning the sculpture, viewers are invited to decipher their own meaning, or inscribe a new one - to decide, in the moment of contact, what a piece of matter can be asked to carry.