THE FISH MARKET
‘ The hand holds so much power – the power to love, to hate, to create, to destroy.’ SUPPORT, Lorenzo Quinn
The resin and fibreglass installation
of one of the sculptor’s small children’s
hands and wrists emerges from the Grand Canal
many times life size and startlingly white
to brace the rose Ca’ Sagredo Hotel –
once a palace where Galileo stayed –
as if to prevent its imminent collapse.
When we arrive on the opposite bank
so you can take photographs the market
has closed, all the fishmongers gone but one
gutting and beheading – his right arm tattooed
with a shoal of fish, his left a death’s head.
The otherwise empty arcades echo
with shouting and barking of seagulls,
herring and black-headed, scrapping and flapping
over discarded fish heads and entrails
among the scattered polystyrene boxes
and the plastic wrapping.