‘ 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.