Kitchen Golems – Photo-Etchings

“Look! It’s moving. It’s alive. It’s alive… It’s alive, it’s moving, it’s alive, it’s alive, it’s alive, it’s alive, IT’S ALIVE!” Frankenstein 1931 Dir James Whale

In jewish mythology The Golem is a creature fashioned from earth and bought to life by ritual. He was normally a benign figure who would be called on for help in time of need, but possessing little intelligence it would respond to orders in a literal manner which could result in unforeseen and sometimes unfortunate consequences.
These Kitchen Golems arose from my interests in still life (and the sculptural qualities of the genre) and a fascination with our need to anthropomorphise objects. Like much traditional still life the objects depicted are mundane, they are familiar and ordinary forms common to most of our homes and more often than not paid little heed. But these little stacks of cans are able to reference a world of the imagination – memories of film, art and literature.

Our culture has many other examples of inanimate matter being given life, either through arcane ritual or the application of technology; mummies, androids, Frankensteins monster, and so on. The desire to give life seems to be a basic need of the human psyche and perhaps a fundamental driver of the desire to create. To take unassuming materials and through the creative process transform them, imbue them with a life of their own.