Cast bronze from 1 & 2 pence coins sterling, patina
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Shown as part of Skulptur Projekte 2.0, Beau Travail, Stockholm (SE) 🇸🇪.
July 5 – August 30, 2025. 

This bronze parakeet was cast from melted 1 and 2 pence coins—small change, or 'shrapnel', or 'coppers', as it’s referred to in England. Then patinaed green, mimicking bird that the coins have been reshaped to resemble.

I remember the metallic taste of change as a child, sucking on the coppers my Grandmother gave me after collecting her prescription. She’d give me and my sister the change from a ten pound note, that we’d spend on sweets. At that time those pennies were actually bronze, unlike there copper-coated steel counterparts that fill our pockets now. And though they no longer mint them that way, the bronze lives on—still legal tender, still part of our everyday, echoes from the past now collected from circulation and reimagined in the form of a bird. A parakeet, a bright green bird, out of place, has made its home amid the grey skies of London. An invasive species, yes—but also something beautiful becoming part of the city’s identity, something foreign that brings life.   

Each coin carries a trace of the past what’s been spent, passed through hands, tucked in pockets, slipped across counters. There’s a history here that was formed into the work, a quiet transformation—from the forgotten weight of loose change to something singular and solid. 

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