Harty Triptych
2012
1
caution not
that pigs might fly
for here
in 1909
one did
2
Icarus
the spirit
of adventure
‘no man’ –
as the prophet said
– ‘soars too high
if he soars
with his own
wings’
3
eyes
through time
have seen
and minds
have marvelled
at this thing
a bird
in flight
great wings
riding
the breeze
and somewhere
between the dream
and invention
the suggestion
of impossible
freedoms
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Links
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More on the installation from commissioners. FrancisKnight (contemporary art pracice) »
Notes
This work is carved into two resting points by sculptor Alun Heslop located on a RSPB nature reserve at Harty on the Isle of Sheppey, famous for its Marsh Harriers. The same landscape was a site - during the early twentieth century - for flights by pioneering aviators. In 1909, J.T.C. Moore-Brabazon took a piglet named Icarus on the first one mile flight in a heavier-than-air flying machine
“Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.”
– Lord Kelvan, President of the Royal Society, 1895