Relic V

Spiczka’s ‘Relic’ is derived from dual childhood experiences; the discovery, capture of and occasional matchbox-marvelling at a bleached, jewel-like skeleton from a boar in Minnesota, and the wild young imaginings of crusted religious relics — fingers, skulls, bodily appendages — often rumoured to be sat rotting within his attended school church. Interrogating that disconnection between experience and imagination, ‘Relic V’ ghosts the loaded and significant form of the crucifix and the skeletal structure of man, an impression of bone or wood afforded through the delicate pressing, welding, and oxidation of steel sheets. The celebration of harmonic structure, abstract symbolism, an instrument-like form and balance is met with a far messier reality of pain, suffering and death.