Modern Icons: Through the plughole: The sculptor Hadrian Pigott comes clean about his use of soap to Iain Gale

Iain Gale
Monday 20 June 1994 23:02 BST
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I like soap. It reminds me of my body. In this piece, Wash 1, Self, position 1, London 23 March 1994, there are 18 soap dishes along a wall, and in each there's a bar of soap. But instead of a logo, it has the name of a body part written on it. They make up a list of the parts of my own body and the order in which I wash them. In a way it's a self-portrait. A strange resonance is set up between the word on the bar and the expectation of it being a logo.

Another, larger, work, Dirt Urgent, is a straight pun. A single bar, it's to do with soap being paradoxical. There's a cynical, dark side to soap. When you have a bar of soap in your hand it has the potential for health and cleanliness, but as soon as you add water it changes state and has the ability to poison and pollute. It's one of life's dilemmas.

I've also made two larger pieces - free-formed pieces based on my looking at types of bath. They are a combination of features of bath, body and soap. The holes in them are synonymous with either bath plumbing or the orifices of the body. I wanted to get the essence of what goes on inside the bath.

Hadrian Pigott's soap pieces can be seen by arrangement with Jibby Bean (071-723 5531). They will be displayed at the Saatchi Gallery early next year

(Photograph omitted)

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