>Some Change Of Ten Pounds_2025

Cast bronze from 1 & 2 pence coins sterling, patina
>IG

This bronze sculpture of a 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.

Shown as part of Skulptur Projekte 2.0, Beau Travail, Stockholm (SE) 🇸🇪. July 5 – August 30, 2025. Then RE-patinad in 2026 with a lighter, more ‘apple-green’ oxidation. It was then shown at Haninge Konsthall as part of Krona Eller Klave?, Stockholm (Sweden). This installation runs until the 10th May 2026. You can see some more about Krona Eller Klave? if you click on this link.

I remember the metallic taste of change as a child, sucking on the coppers my Grandmother gave me after collecting her prescriptions. She’d give me and my sister the change from a ten-pound note, we’d spend the pennies on sweets.

At that time those coins 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 ever shifting identity, something foreign that brings life.

Beau Travail, 2025, Stockholm (SE):

Haninge Konsthall, 2026, Stockholm (SE):

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