Edward Allington

Description

In a recent competition for a commission in Whitehaven, Cumbria, Edward Allington proposed a gigantic shell form which was to be positioned near the sea, but also close to an industrial area. The sculpture was to stand over a beck which entered the sea at this point. These factors allowed Allington to include elements which he frequently celebrates in his work: partial visual access to the mystery of the interior of a sculpture, spiralling form, and in this case the sound of water. The giant shell which spiralled horizontally, with its opening towards the water, had portholes through which to observe the beck, the distant seascape and the landscape, and also offered the possibility of listening to the sea.

In Cochlea, a much smaller sculpture, Allington was able to pursue ideas generated by the commission, which unfortunately was not realised by him. He also thought back to another work entitled Three Steps Towards the Sea 1985, now in the Weltkunst Collection and currently displayed at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. One of the three shells in this work gave its form to Cochlea. The title, which suggests that this shell is the spiralling form of the inner ear, is a play on the notion of being able to hear the sound of the sea in a shell held up to the ear, when what we actually hear is our own blood pounding. He has placed the shell's opening upwards, like a vessel. The interior is dark and mysterious, once holding the possibility of life - now a carapace for other elements. Shell forms have recurred regularly in Allington's work, as have cornucopias and spiralling architectural forms. In his First Snail/From the Thousand Eared Night of 1983, in the collection of the British Council, a golden shell spewed out a thousand plastic insects, the creatures of the night that hear everything and are rarely glimpsed. Cochlea too has such elements of secrecy.