Seán Cotter

PAX - Peace Concepts Sculptural and Others

I am developing a series of time-based lead sculptures in which atmospheric and micro-climatic forces are an active part of the work. These pieces are not static objects but processes: the sculptures change, corrode, and reveal traces of their environment over weeks and months. The idea began with work made for my last exhibition, Boulder Milt, which centred on climate change and working with new painting processes, utilising recycled lead from a home build, to create lead white paint. From that body of work came the simple question, what if the material itself carried the story of transformation?

To work with recycled lead sheets folded into delicate, origami-inspired forms. Lead is a material with a complex biography, industrial, dense, malleable, and historically used to build, protect and to harm. When exposed to acetic vapours (vinegar) together with the gases produced by fermenting organic matter (historically, dung or manure), lead first forms lead acetate and then, over time, converts to a basic lead carbonate, the traditional “lead white” pigment used for centuries in painting. During this conversion the metal’s surface develops a soft, powdery, white skin; trace minerals and impurities can leave subtle blues, greens and other tints. The heavy grey plane of raw metal becomes almost poetically, a fragile white bloom.

I was struck by how beautiful and delicate that corroded surface was, a white, powdery patination. I harvested and cleaned some of those fragments, remembering how lead white had once been ground and mixed with linseed oil to make paint. That recollection, the transformation of a base heavy metal into a light fragile pigment, suggested a conceptual project. A work that would physically enact a passage from hardness to fragility, from weapon to symbol, from conflict to peace.

The sculptures take on familiar emblems of peace, a dove, olive branch, a flag, but rendered in folded lead, using origami techniques. Origami is a contemplative, disciplined craft and I chose it deliberately because of its association with care, ritual, and longevity. The technique also links the work to the Edo period in Japan, an era long remembered for internal stability and an extended peace under the Tokugawa shogunate (1603–1868). That historical echo sits beside contemporary anxieties. We are living in tense times, where peace is stretched, contested and fragile. Armed conflicts and military engagements, as well as structural wars including economic policies and social divisions, contribute to the erosion of social cohesion. People displaced by austerity and unaffordable housing often become scapegoats in political narratives that favour the powerful. The sculptures are intended as a meditation on how peace can be gradually challenged by many small forces, until it is altered or broken.

The transformation of lead, grey to white, hard to powdery, whole to fragile, functions as an extended metaphor. Lead can be shaped into bullets, or under the right influences it becomes white and soft. The physical change suggests a moral one, a move from a state of readiness for harm toward a state of vulnerability and care. But that vulnerability is double-edged. The white patina is beautiful and tender, yet chemically and materially compromised. It requires maintenance, containment and constant care to preserve what little structural integrity remains. The sculpture’s new condition is unstable, easily disturbed, just as peace requires vigilance and active tending.

Each piece is displayed inside a sealed vitrine that contains the mild, controlled atmosphere necessary to encourage the patination process. Vapours and warmth over time will coax the lead to change. The vitrine is not a mere display cabinet but part of the artwork, a microclimate in which the work lives and ages. For safety and preservation, I will use secure, sealed cases with clear signage and filtered ventilation. The presence of toxic materials in the work means the display must meet strict handling and exhibition standards. The sealed vitrine also becomes a metaphor, peace contained, observed, protected but also isolated, visible and precious behind glass.

Over time visitors will see the pieces shift in surface, opacity and texture. Initially grey and metallic, the origami forms will soften into a white powder-coated surface that appears almost like dried fabric. Under close inspection the powder can flake and crumble, the archive of the process will be small piles of dust, subtle colourations, and changes in form. The change is slow, measured in days and weeks rather than in the single decisive moment of a performative act, it is an accumulation. I intend to document the transformation with photography and time-lapse video, so the process is legible to audiences who encounter the work at different stages. In this way the piece is both an object and a record of time.

Working with lead raises unavoidable ethical and practical questions. I use recycled lead where possible to acknowledge the material’s industrial afterlife and to reduce waste. All handling will be done with appropriate PPE (personal protective equipment) and under controlled conditions. Installations are designed so that neither the public nor staff are exposed to risk. The toxicity of the material is an integral part of the concept. The corroded fragile state that evokes the “whiteness” of peace is also a hazardous unstable condition. The paradox, peace as something both fragile and toxic to mishandling is precisely the tension I want to register. It is a caution, peace must be protected, but protection itself can be complicated and potentially harmful if poorly managed.

Visually the works balance starkness with subtleties. The starting greys are industrial and severe with the evolving whites, soft, dusty and quietly luminous. Occasional hints of blue or green trace minerals add variances. The folded edges of origami create a geometry that reads differently as the surface changes, highlights that once glinted on metal, become matte ridges, sharp creases soften into fragile edges. Lighting and the presence of warmth (gentle, engineered) encourage the patination but are tuned so the effect is gradual and contemplative, rather than abrupt or sensational. The vitrine’s interior is sparsely arranged to allow close viewing yet to emphasise the objects’ isolation.

There are many layers to the work. At one level it is a material experiment that follows a historic chemical pathway, a reminder that pigments, objects and language themselves have histories bound up with industry, craft and the environment. At another level it is a political meditation, the sculptures are physical embodiments of the way peace can be eroded, how false narratives shift responsibility onto marginalised people, how economic systems create pressure that corrodes social trust. The fragility of the white patina is an emblem of peace’s precariousness, while the sealed vitrine suggests the necessity of both protection and honest acknowledgment of toxic legacies. Finally, by naming the series Paxand using iconic peace imagery, I invite viewers to consider peace not as an abstract ideal but as a practical, material condition that must be made and maintained.

The project is iterative. Each sculpture will have its own tempo of change, and documentation will form an essential companion to the physical objects. I am exploring ways to exhibit fragments of the powder safely as contained samples or as material studies, and to integrate text that make visible the social narratives I am responding to. I also plan to work with conservators and safety experts to develop best-practice display protocols that balance the conceptual needs of the work with public safety and environmental responsibility.

Ultimately, Pax is an invitation to slow observation. It asks viewers to witness a transformation that is at once chemical and metaphorical, beautiful and dangerous, stable and fragile. The sculptures propose that peace is not a finished product but an ongoing, delicate practice that must be tended to with care, honesty, and an awareness of the material and moral costs involved.