Dunhill and O’Brien
Still Life Figures 1
Spending so much time at home has made us more aware of the numerous objects and images that we have collected over the years, that appear in clusters throughout our house. In our living room on top of the bookshelves there are 31 standing figures. Unlike Freud’s collection of small figurative sculptures, these objects are not precious antiquities from distant cultures, they are mostly mass-produced souvenirs we have found during our travels both near and far. The plaster Japanese military officer pictured here (possibly Hirohito due to the gold braid) was found in a junk shop in Nikko, while the 1940s cast iron Mr Peanut came from a church hall in Norwich, and the plastic Padre Pio was purchased in a gift shop at the Santa Maria Sopra Minerva Basilica in Rome. Photographing the figures, perched somewhat precariously on a ladder, the titles of the books were barely visible or noticed. In that hard to reach area of the book case the relationship between Alfred Dunhill’s The Art of Smoking and the 3 copies of Tamiko, a romantic fiction by Ronald Kirkbride, only became apparent when reviewing the image on our computer.
