I’m going to show you a couple of photos and a video: I think I took the photos in 2008 and I definitely took the video in 2010... it's now the end of 2015

We can assume that I’d obviously been thinking about this statue for a while and whilst I was passing through Cambridge, which is the equestrian capital of New Zealand, I stopped to see my sister and borrowed her boyfriend’s shitty video camera.

I found this stuff archived away on a hard drive in Oct 2015, I assumed that I had no particular intentions for this material when I was acquiring it… But I’ve discovered that not only had I made choices about the framing of the statue in the video (for example I have positioned the camera at the back of the statue rather than the front), that I also have research pictures like this.

It’s probably also useful to note that I had taken a trip through Europe in 2009 and taken millions of pictures of war-like equestrian statues and I guess I’d been trying to figure out what the point of them was. There aren’t really these triumphant equestrian statues in New Zealand, and when I think back I was struck by how our only close cousin to these monuments is a completely domestic affair… a stationary mare and foal rather than a stallion in full motion, complete with rolling eyes and some old white dude on its back brandishing a sword.

It’s also probably useful for you all to know that I’m trying to unpick my recent experiences at the Rio sculpture biennale, in which I took a leather cast from a large public monument, which was also an equestrian statue. I’ve been in touch with the exhibitions manager at the Baltic about importation laws and how to best get this sculpture into the uk, the fact that it might not be allowed into the country is kind of interesting in itself. And I’ve been looking into how to deconstruct this work or build upon it, both in my own head and physically …. Maybe re-purposing the leather, making it into armor, or bags for tourists.