Some years ago, I sat alone on a small, deserted island, one of many hundred scattered in a largely uninhabited archipelago in the Andaman Sea. Only the local Moken fisherman were permitted in this region, en route to their fishing grounds, it felt incredibly humbling and peaceful …a place many would regard as paradise.

Under a huge blue sky surrounded by crystal-clear warm ocean and white virgin sands lay many giant clam shells, simply scattered along the beach.

I recall how quiet the world seemed and that I felt I could have been the only person on earth.

One of the shells I held had a hole in it and what many would regard as the least perfect of the many I’d already looked at. I became fascinated by what I could see through the hole and for a moment was drawn into what was missing rather than the larger entirety of my surroundings.

In all this magnificence it was the lack of perceived perfection, a little hole in a broken shell, that drew me in commanding my attention. The bigger picture at that point made more sense by what was missing, flawed and no longer there. The missing part reminded me of fragility and the experience of the moment itself.

Artists seem attracted to decay in its many forms and often find a compelling beauty within. With my limited knowledge and understanding of the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi I suspect it’s the delicate fragility of what surrounds us, often sympathetically, taking the time to appreciate it’s part of the privilege of ageing and the beauty that offers.

In response I’ve created a heavy solid almost brutalist structure, a form easy to remember, an island of sorts comfortably standing alone. The structure, due to the materials it’s created from, suggests stability.

In paying homage to the missing part that surrounds us all, often disregarded as having little worth I offered a paradoxical balance by adding a very fine single sheet of 24ct gold leaf, a mineral from the stars that rests on earth and which society regards as being both of great value materially and spiritually.

Once noticed this fragile leaf commands our full attention, it stays in our mind, and it becomes difficult to think of the larger piece without the brightness and warmth the smaller section offers. The most fragile and delicate addition of the larger structure becomes ‘the moment’ and that is all we have and how perhaps we will be remembered.