CC-BY-NC: Goodchild 
Goodchild I recently had an exhibition of my work on seaweeds called ‘Come and clean the ocean’. Part of the exhibition was an interactive element in which people were invited to ‘clean’ balls of frozen sea water in which they could find a piece of detritus that I had picked up on a local beach on a particular day. They could then weave the detritus into a found fishing net which was attached to a clock made of 3 different types of seaweed. There were 2 types of clock: one analogue and one digital. The analogue clock makes people aware, if only subconsciously, of time past, present and to come whereas the digital is fixed in the moment. The hands of the title refer to the hands of the analogue clock, time ticking, whereas the others are the hands of the ‘artist’ weaving the detritus into the net.
Hands
A photo:
two sets of hands:
one,
on a heartless clock
tick on,
another,
on a networking artist,
fumble to weave detritus
into a meaningful form.
That photo
is recycled as a prompt
that art
is as tangled as
the fishing net snagged on a roof tile
-engaged but can’t move on-
is as tangled as
the reasons we don’t have
to live a disposable life.
A prompt
that life still hears the metronome
for musician tides
in the dance of dying seaweed
whose holdfast no longer holds,
whose spores and eggs still need
new shells, new rocks
new minds
to hold them.