Double Games, Red In Tooth And Claw deploys 300.000 Stanley blades to subvert the competitive attributes of school gymnasium apparatus.
The apparatus’s methodology seeks to challenge a participant’s inner competitive impulse as well as encourage a competitive instinct within a group setting. Double Games, Red In Tooth And Claw both endorse and counteract these instincts. Through the work personal memories of school gymnasium apparatus and its implementation by educational institutions has been questioned and distorted. As the film director Lindsay Anderson of the classic 1968 British film IF… stated, “School is a microcosm of society”
In the mid 1800s, gymnastic apparatus was adapted from its historical military application and was re-employed in private educational institutions. At the turn of the 1900s, the apparatus was introduced into the P.E curriculum of state schools. The apparatus’s educational implementation paralleled the wide-ranging promotion of Social Darwinism programs in Europe and America.
These implementations reflected the logic of the day that physical improvements would enhance the evolutionary concept of race regeneration. This allowed P.E to link its theoretical base with the scientific theory of evolution and the pseudo-science of eugenics. Physical exercise was equated with adaptation, strength, survival, intelligence, class and hygiene that were to be hereditarily transferred.
The title of the work relates to the Poet Laureate Alfred Tennyson line “ Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw” which was a precursor to the political philosopher Herbert Spencer’s most often quoted phrase “survival of the fittest”.
Materials: Vintage School Gymnasium Apparatus, 300.000 JB9IF0101 Sheffield Steel Stanley Blades
Sculpture
Year: 2008-2010
Vaulting Horse: (H) 140 x (W) 110 x (L) 200 cm
Fixed Wall Bars: (H) 270 x (W) 33 x (L) 400 cm
Climbing Rope Climbing Rope: (L) 400 ø 10 cm
Vaulting Board: (H) 20 x (W) 60 x (L) 120 cm
School Gym Bench: (H) 30 x (W) 27 x (L) 320 cm
Medicine Ball: ø 33 cm
