…reached. So, deltoid-bodhi-leaf-shield…    (2020)

…reached. So, deltoid-bodhi-leaf-shield…    (2020)

Pivot panel from the left wing of Tornado combat jet aircraft; ZD744.
Plaster, Kodak retouching inks and lotus seeds.
62cm x 3cm x 82cm

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…reached. So, deltoid-bodhi-leaf-shield…    (2020) has the function of a fig leaf; (to hide and provide protection, to cover or compensate for physical insecurity, to shield – it looks like a shield – and to camouflage).  Its shape is like a leaf, its yellow underside (when situated within its original source) inadvertently creates a diagram of the sun/tree trunk and roots. This interior structure is turned into an artist’s palette of pigments (an attempt to make culture, like the ‘girdle of fig leaves’ in Genesis 3:7)  and seed tray.  Bolt holes within its surface are used to hold lotus seeds; It becomes a template for plant propagation (see also: I See Through Every Image.(A souvenir for Laarni; A planting template for Belladonna seeds), 2013  , The woods shall rise up in those places where you pause, (1995) , Sowmat  (2007) ,A Sting from Two Houses (2022)). The Lotus flower is regarded in many different cultures, especially in eastern religions, as a symbol of purity, enlightenment, self-regeneration and rebirth.
The work is presented as a tool for doing various actions with rather than a sculpture or picture. Although the use of Kodak photographic retouching inks suggests a process of repair and/or enhancement of an image.
The sculpture uses a panel from a Tornado combat jet aircraft wing ( ZD744, which had been used in conflicts Iraq and Afghanistan etc and then subsequently was decommissioned and dismantled) and so is deeply associated with death and destruction.  It is a panel from a part of the wing that changes the position of the wings in flight, shaping its movements; so it functions very similarly to the triangular deltoid muscle in the shoulder which is used to raise the arms. So, reaching higher (striving for higher or superior forms of consciousness, higher power, an ascent into the aerial, reaching up into a tree to pick a forbidden fruit). Or it exists as an autumn leaf fluttering down from a tree, a plane falling out of the sky, the Fall of Icarus, a falling body (of work), The Fall, …etc.
…reached. So, deltoid-bodhi-leaf-shield…partly derives from descriptions of a ‘huge talking curative leaf’  that was carried around on the back of a ‘Silesian woman, who would crawl into the room on her hands and knees’. The frequent (and very welcomed) visits to Chodzko’s father by the woman and her enormous healing leaf, over the course of a few months prior to his death from cancer, were described to Chodzko with great clarity, detail and consistency.   This character/vision/spirit/reality reappears as a description of a passerby in The Return of the Fleet Spring Heads    (2021)

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Installation images are from the exhibition Ultramagnetic, at Well Projects, 2021/2022, curated by Benedict Drew
Image 2; includes work by Benedict Drew
Other installation images: At Fort Road Hotel, Margate, (with works by Tracy Emin and Hannah Lees).