Song For My Father

This tower is a very personal piece for me as its about my dad, Pete Hilling (1926 – 2016)  and all the men like him.  Men who worked with their hands, who mended things and who made and built things.  Those men with work shops or sheds at the bottom of the garden.  Some of my dad’s tools are enclosed within the piece, his plane, chisels and drills.  Spent bullets, rivets and screws from his shed decorate the piece.  They take us back to a time before plastic and throw away items.  

There are photos of Pete as a child and as a young man with his mates in the Navy during the second world war. Pictures of him, his family distorted behind magnifying glasses as time and memory can be distorted.   These photos take us through time passing and the process of aging. 

When he was old his teeth began to fall out, probably because he never visited the dentist!  I saved four of the teeth and each one lives in its own small drawer in the tower with the tale Pete told me of how they had fallen out. “It had been loose for a long time, I’d just taken a swig of my pint – you know how you smack your lips together? That’s funny, I thought, put my hand in my mouth and there’s my bloody tooth – it had come out!”