Monumental, shiny and slick Contact Failure presents two thorns in dialogue at threatening scale.

The tips reach out to one another, pressurising the space that attempts connection. The thorns tips are embedded with aluminium. Despite consistent use in communication cables, aluminium is known to have ‘contact problems’, requiring other combinations of metals to be consistently successful. Riffing on aluminium’s capacity to transmit and receive, but also to fail, crystallises the tension between points of hopeful connection. A similar tension is found in Henry Moore’s Three Points 1939-40. The space between the tips “explore(s) feelings of uncertainty and anxiety”. There is potential for action on which Moore commented: “This pointing has an emotional or physical action in it where things are just about to touch but don’t…”. This lack of closure, of hanging-in-the-balance is interchangeable with the tension that exercises itself long term in fractured family units.