tom hackett sculpture

14 yard apology                               

(detail)

2 lines of 14 wooden yardsticks, inlaid into the wood horizontally along the ruler’s lengths  a line of text which explains a childhood incident where I cheated in my 14 yard swimming test by putting my foot down on the pool bottom with about 6ft to go. I got away with it and I got my certificate, but I cheated never the less. This took place at Mayfield Primary School in Cambridge, where I grew up. The writing tells the story, makes the apology, and reflects on the value of this. It runs for the length of 14 yards. The work playfully explores the fact how the little things or incidents from our past can lodge themselves into our personal library of minor regrets. Whilst these things are arguably of no consequence in the big picture, it is still curious that they somehow form a lament just niggling enough to persist in our consciousness. Just niggling enough to cause temporal reflections of minor remorse and illogical desire for rectification and redemption. Fourteen Yard apology is a tribute to these minor ghosts in the machine.