Soldered brass, 17 x 13 x 13, 2017.
Fame is traditionally a winged figure who sounds a trumpet, and the sculpture shows her at it. A feathered wing spreads at the right, and a long horn rises steeply from beside what reads as her head. The horn is the longest member of the work, roughly as long as the figure is tall, so the instrument outsizes the one who sounds it. Fame is mostly sound carried far from the person it concerns, and the horn is the part of the work that does the carrying. Ovid builds the house of Fame entirely of ringing brass, and the sculpture is brass throughout, so the palace is made of the material that carries sound.
The figure is small and the palace is a seat. She sits on a platform above a flared stem and a stepped foot, the profile of a monument base, and the whole work stands on the gallery’s plinth. She is raised on pedestal upon pedestal. The title promises rooms, and the work gives an elevation, so the palace is the height she has been lifted to.
At the centre of the figure, where a chest or a shield would be, is a round medallion carrying a small relief figure. It reads as a commemorative medal, the likeness fame is made about. It faces the room at a fraction of the horn’s size, so the thing celebrated is dwarfed by the instrument that celebrates it.
