'The 4th Siege' comprises of a handheld Torch in which the lamp rotates on itself 360 degrees over a duration of 6 hours. The work relates to the turning of the earth and a calculation through fossil records that days once lasted for 60 seconds and are getting progressively Longer. The title refers both to the idea of a torch being used in a siege and to the idea of a barrier or constraint leading to more time. 'The 4th Siege' is the latest work by Richard Rigg in which he continues to develop his interest in ideas of abstract origin - something that can't be reached.Richard Rigg’s work is reflexive and anomalous in nature, drawing upon the roots of language and objects to arrive at Sculpture that expresses a kind of inverted Platonic ideal. Richard often responds to functional objects that are closely connected to humanity: either as a practical support (a chair or a table) or as a vehicle for communication or thinking (a writing desk, telegraph poles, a dwelling place). Such objects come to symbolise the history of human civilization and are compounded with existential problems that provoke a poetic and melancholic reflection upon the sublime.From email correspondence with the artist:  A siege sort of suggests of being surrounded by something, and also cut off from access to the outside, and maybe something that cant can’t quite escape from, and I suppose if this was dimensions this being what couldn’t quite escape from, something that contains somehow Another definition of siege is ‘a prolonged period’ and also I think I liked to think of time as something that is unnamed and slightly menacing And it is trying to talk about something without naming it as not suggest that theres anything there which there might not, but using siege is to try and suggest something there surrounding, waiting but isn’t A torch being a source of guidance but that only being partial so the turn sort of points to this or the limitations and again maybe limitations as barriers in a way which lossely links back to siege It has it roots in the words old French sege and L. sedicum being seat and also from Latin sedere sit or to sit, and it’s the number 4th on the title but hearing (or reading it to yourself) it also can be misread as fourth which is forward in time, or place or something and also meaning away from a particular place, so in this misreading there slight pitched against each other, This maybe sounds vague but im very interested in misreading or hearing something, Also found this note which is the root of torch theres two I found old French which is torche which means ‘twisted thing’ and latin torquere which means ‘twist’ referring back to the twisted tow in wax, so its trying to unite the thing back to the root somehow, but I think may of found after the title however, not sure Length of day comes information from a paper from Arbab I. Arbab at the department of physics at Omdurman Ahlia University in Sudan, the paper is called The length of the day a cosmological perspective Its quite complicated and I don’t fully understand it but did the 6 hours bit and thinking of it as predawn i suppose, but basically uses Mach principle, that the inertia of an object is not just a property of the object but depends on whats is around outside that object, also  keplers law of graviatation with all this and more ftis into a formula compared and backed up by the fossils records data, which is a poorly stated overview no doubt, but which suggests length of the day is found to be 6 hours when the Earth formed, the day gets longer by 0.002 seconds a century So when the battery reaches maybe 1.1V (starts at 1.5V) it should be close to 6 hours I think it maybe is now nearer just under four with the brand new battery, so it almost in a way charts this up to this moment, in its absenceand also its moving at a rate that you might not think it is which is sort of bound up in the first few pointsIt does have a quite practicable relation I suppose, as it might almost be what would be used in a siege left discarded after the event, Although I suppose the rate of rotations sugest before the event, and the title seems to almost name an event of some sort best wishes,richard

Richard Rigg

Related Artist

Richard Rigg

London

Newcastle