No Clergyman Attended (2006)
Photograph on aluminium 101 x 190 cm
Courtesy: the artist and Union Gallery, London
No Clergyman Attended are the final lines in Goethe’s novel The sorrows of Young Werther, the story of a young man’s suicide provoked by unrequited love. The photograph No Clergyman Attended shows a crashed car, a Nissan Sunny. It is a test car, in a fire station (recognizable by the red door), and with which the firefighters practice cutting open accident vehicles to rescue and save crash casualties. The photograph asserts its equiviocality when the crash is revealed as life-saving exercise.
– Rut Blees Luxemburg
Included by Rut Blees Luxemburg as part of her project examining the city, titled London – A Modern Project, this image of convulsive beauty and sculptural dimensions, full of melancholy, becomes a metaphoric symbol of the psychology of the modern city and the car: beauty and chaos, love and hate, security and threat.
– A.M.
