This piece is a celebration of tools , both as functional objects as they helped me make the work , and also as a way to acknowledge the beauty and design of tools them self.

Training as a blacksmith has taught me to look differently at the tools I use to make my work. Tool use by humans dates back millions of years, anthropologists believe that the use of tools was an important step in the evolution of mankind.

I’m basically a tool addict.

Part of my three year full time blacksmithing course was making tools, hammers , chisels, tongs, etc. A blacksmiths’ tools are all made of steel, so everything we use we can make. I have learnt the precision and craftsmanship that goes in to tool making and now find them beautiful objects in their own rite.

This piece is first encountered face on. All that is visible is the the tips of tools, poking through, which from the front look like an abstract steel sculpture. It is not till the viewer looks at the other side that they encounter the rest of the tool.

By isolating different parts of the tools seen peeping through the steel and making the viewer walk around the sculpture to realise what they are, after first seeing them as purely sculptural objects.