23.09.16 - 02.10.16
The Job Centre, Deptford
On a hard wooden surface sits a large bear-faced cylinder that simulates the popular lunchbox sandwich ham ‘Billy Bear’, renowned for resembling a cartoon bear when cut through a cross-section. de Pulford has sculpted a similar ham on steroids out of indigestible materials, as if intended for a larger and different kind of lunchbox. This sculpture is not intended for static viewership, slowly sliced into portions by the artist. Accompanying this action is a projection of the sculpture in its current setting, prior to the slicing, creating a gradual dissonance as the sculpture progresses in its process of reduction.
The dense material of the sculpture makes the slicing difficult so the customary serrated knife is replaced with a handsaw, a rather more apt instrument for the scale of this ham that reveals an everyday violence. This slicing becomes an approach to making sculpture, borrowing from domestic gestures of preparation and consumption to introduce it into a predominantly male narrative of minimalist sculpture making.