Set of Two Silver Register Hands

These silver hands are maquettes that are representative of Burke's monumental, Register. (Register comprises two thousand iron casts of the artist's hand that have been industrially produced and assembled in simple, functional storage grids.) The starting point for Register was Burke's encounter with a newspaper photograph of a silent protest in the Plaza Del Sol in Madrid. A crowd had gathered to register their protest at the capture of Miguel Blanco, by ETA (Basque for 'Basque Homeland and Freedom'), and had filled the square with a forest of raised hands. This formed a link with other photographs in the artist's collection of crowds at concerts and festivals seen from above and prompted the idea that a show of hands can express a diverse range of emotions.