The Long Goodbye (detail)
mixed media assemblage
wooden figure, glass rod, fragments, music boxes, dice.
by Dale Copeland, 2006
440 X 190 X 90 mm
This assemblage won the Professor Jack Richards Award for sculpture at the Women's Art Exhibition in Gisborne, 2007
and also the overall Supreme award (and was bought by one of the judges. I'm honoured.)
| Alzheimer's disease has been called "The long goodbye". Here a remote-looking figure looks out past a distorting glass rod, hung with fragments of lost meaning - disconnected words, symbols, beads. At the side, hidden in the halves of an old wooden game box, are two music boxes. Wind them both up ... one plays a jolly life-affirming tune ("It's a small world after all") and the other plays Brahms lullaby, much more slowly. Together they make sometimes discordant, sometimes strangely beautiful sounds. The jolly one finishes and the sleep comes very slowly. Dice hang and turn under the music boxes. This sort of luck you don't want. |
Dale Copeland lives at Puniho, coastal Taranaki, New Zealand
More of her art can be seen in the Showcase section of the Virtual Tart website.
email Dale at dale@tart.co.nz