Artist : Jim Carter (b. 1967)
Title : There Are Tongues, They Will Be Ceased’ & ‘He Gathered The Wind in His Fist
Medium : fox, cow and sheep bone, clay. fox fur, poplar leaf, hazel wood,170 cm (H) / cow teeth, wood, clay. poplar leaf, soil, ash, 150 cm (H)
Size : 105 x 76 cm each


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In these two territorial boundary markers, the right hand is closed and mute, suggesting secrecy, the unknown and arcane. The left hand is raised so as to challenge unjust and oppressive action, both forbidding trespass into hallowed terrain.

“In the forest, as in the skull, there are levels of consciousness much less supervised by rational control, and from this legitimate dark, a cry will appear as more or less unimpeded emotion. In the Hebrew language it is known as the hôy, a term associated with lamentation for the dead, that yet lends itself to complex utterances. If I think of this work as an agent for the cause of the subjugated animal, then the hôy-word crystalises as a reflex sourced from anger, grief and pain. It is a cry that secures the boundary and resists the transgressor, or one which makes pronouncements that tend towards vengeance and punishment (though the root is always in grief and suffering). Of course, if we ally this sound to a gesture of the hand, then meanings become more numerous as well as emphatic. The right hand is here closed and mute, and into this we can read ideas of secrecy and the occluded animal. The power and dominion of its hermetic silence is not denied the other hand, it is just of a different order. The left has occasion for sound, whereas the right does not, if it ever needed it. What are we to make of these hands at the threshold that in form suggest the man but which are countered against him? Are they not a man’s instrument with which to conquer, emblematic of his sovereignty and kingship? But the sign is raised more so to challenge his unjust and oppressive action than to accent his differentiating image. It expresses, moreover, the spirit of the animal in opposition which, as far as this work is concerned, forbids trespass into hallowed terrain. The left hand, its fingers extended, denotes command and invocation; the right is equally raised in a prohibitive gesture, and one which comes with a hex of judgement and attendant calamity (I imagine the intruder who crosses this threshold into the grove of the satyr subject to all the repercussions of a curse).” Jim Carter 2021.

Jim Carter was born in Worcestershire in 1967. He received an MA with distinction in Art and Environment from Falmouth University and an MSc Award in Ecopsychology, Centre For Human Ecology. Carter’s work has appeared in The Dark Mountain, About Place Journal, Unpsychology and Earthlines magazine.



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