Eves Apple Edwina Sandys

Edwina Sandys
Eve's Apple, 1998
Painted steel, 365 x 177 x 150 centimetres

Eve's Apple displays Edwina Sandys continued interest in positive and negative space. This very feminine hand with its polished fingernails is constructed out of three separately cut planes of steel. Approaching the sculpture from the side, the piece begins as a series of two-dimensional straight lines, but as the viewer comes closer, more angles begin to develop, and the work gains a third dimension, a depth which reaches its fullness only when the viewer is staring directly into the centre of the hand.

Eve's Apple captures that moment in the biblical story just after Eve has taken her important bite from the fruit of knowledge. It is a complex turning point, an intersection in which a certain kind of knowledge is achieved while another kind of innocence is lost. The sculpture represents such tensions with its own construction and the perpetually shifting interplay of light and shadow it creates. At every different time of day, the sculpture's multi-layered surface casts different patterns, unique combinations of darkness and light. The apple is displayed prominently, held almost proudly in the fingertips, showing off the marking of its bite. Like most of Sandys' work, Eve's Apple is defined by what is missing. Here, we are presented with that famous cut of fruit that divides our innocence from experience, the absent bite that simultaneously offered and took away.