A collaborative project with Mark Lumsden based on the Laocoön sculpture housed in the Vatican Museum.

Up in Arms, Autumn 2025

Casts of my fists in Gesmonite and Plaster, tattooed with ink. 180*150mm

Exhibition shot of MA Fine Art Collaborative Works: Laocoön and…., RSA building, University of Reading.

Using the Vatican’s most valuable sculpture the Laocoön as a starting point and given an added layer by the protest of the Ultima Generazione (the Last Generation) group. Up in Arms is a collaboration with Mark Lumsden, a 3D sculpture cast in Gesmonite and Plaster from my right hand. The two fists represent protest: on the one hand is tattooed ‘Fuel’ with the hour glass symbol for climate protest and Extinction Rebellion (time is running out) in place of the ‘E’ and on the other ‘the Church owns Me’ with an ornate cross replacing ‘the Church’, in ink.  This piece accentuates the protest of unheeded warnings of climate change and of the hypocrisy and long held burden of institutional Christianity.  

A cast of the extended arm of Laocoön and Sons cast in the RA collection; Initial maquettes for ‘Up in Arms’; Protesters from ‘Ultima Generazione’ arms glued to the plinth of Laocoön and Sons at the Vatican Museum

Conception and Making

The Myth:  The priest Laocoon warned his people not to let the Trojan Horse into Troy. His warning “beware of Greeks bearing gifts” was not taken seriously, and the Gods were angry that he had tried to interfere. They sent giant sea serpents to kill him and his sons.  This made the Trojans think that the horse had been sent by the Gods themselves and so they opened up the gates of the city.

Protest:  Because of the association with unheeded warnings, the sculpture highlights a parallel position of climate activists and so the group ‘Ultima Generazione’ (the last generation) decided to glue their hands to the plinth of the statue.

The Sculpture:  This ancient sculpture was dug up in 1506, and there is some speculation about the sculptor, though generally it is attributed to Agesander or Polydorus of Rhodes: perhaps this was a ‘collaboration’. What is interesting about the sculpture is that (as with many ancient sculptures) the arms and hands were knocked off or not found or damaged, so a competition was held to decide what to replace them with.Raffaello judged the competition and favoured an outstretched arm submitted by the sculptor Sansovino. Michelangelo submitted a bent arm which upon rejection he buried.  The ‘original’ arm was discovered and replaced the outstretched one – it was found to be the same as Michelangelo had imagined. Some say this was Michelangelo’s buried fragment, some say that the actual sculpture was in fact by Michelangelo and that he had buried it ready to be excavated.

My response:  For me this sculpture is all about arms/hands, be it those of protesters or of the unheeded Laocoon trying to protect his sons, or the rival arms posturing arms of the two Renaissance sculptors.  Protest is partly posturing.

Collaboration:  Mark and I linked the piece to protest in different ways – Mark’s around the Vatican and the church, and I around the climate change protest itself, and we both independently came to the idea of tattoos being marked onto the arms.  But the fists marked this protest well and I didn’t have time to finish the arms that I had begun so we tattooed the fists and decided to bury them after the exhibition. Who knows when or if they will be dug up?!!