Barnaby Stone proves that you don’t need to prod, poke and stroke to physically engage an audience member in this exquisitely crafted little piece. For the most part, there was a distance of three or four metres between us – me sat at the top of the stairs, him stood at their foot – and yet, my body underwent a full-blown massage by proxy.
Running down the middle of the stairs like a banister is a beam of oak set on a pedestal like an artefact in a museum. First glances tell you that it’s just wood, but when Stone starts to talk about it, drawing you into its details like a zoom lens, it almost starts to breathe. You register this scent: a musty, organic air-freshener. You notice its grooves and textures, the patches of damp and rot where it seems a collection of dusty particles hanging on together. It becomes nature placed on show, perfectly imperfect and precious.
That delicacy only increases when Stone turns his (and your) attention to its history. Four hundred years as a beam in a house, three hundred aboard a ship and a couple more rooted into the earth, growing and maturing. It is, he explains, nine hundred years old. Give or take.
So, when he casually pops on some safety goggles and fires an electric sander into life, there’s an urge to stop him. You’ve become so fascinated by, so in awe of, even so connected to this object that its wilful destruction seems unstomachable. As the whir grinds into the unseen base of the beam, you feel the vibrations running through your lower back. Fingernails at the rough base of a coffee cup. You squirm in your seat, the buzz starting tiny ripples of spasm in certain muscles. When he starts to smooth manually – first roughly, then more gently – it becomes more bearable; intriguingly meticulous and caring. When he hammers away, to what end you’re not sure, the individual blows strike softly over the distance, before he varnishes lovingly.
And then, inevitably, the bandsaw moves in as it always threatened to do. It’s both harsh and heartening, like a carver moving through a Sunday roast.
Pulling you down by stairlift, what Stones hands you is a slice of time. It is a cross section of the years marked by rings in the wood and of the piece itself, as circles of various size, testifying to recent audience members, form a solar system on its surface. Your own peg is imprinted with an initial and the segment is numbered. As an object, it feels both a sentimental treasure and worthless trinket. Beautiful, yes, but also neutral.
The beauty of Stone’s piece, however, lies in its multitude of connotations. Nature, craft, time, produce are all raised and, though Stone refuses to theorize or provide answers, you come out with a wealth of ethical questions about our relationship to the world around us. That, and an envelope containing something quietly extraordinary.
Photograph by Stephen Dobbie
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