Image: Nike Savvas, The Oarsman, 2018.
NIKE SAVVAS' striking The Oarsman, 2018, is included in the Mustafa Hulusi Posters project, Hoxton Square, London.
The work incorporates the image of a Perpetual Motion balancing toy – a small stainless steel rowboat that is set adrift in a big blue beyond. As a mesmerising ocular device intended for relaxation it swings and bobs under its own trapped momentum and energy.
As a broader metaphor for life, the oarsman speaks to a zone of perpetual transition, of comings and goings, of ups and downs, of changed directions and arrivals and departures. It speaks of ebbs and flows, of temporal states and the passage of time. While the term ‘row your boat’ may infer taking charge of the course for one’s own life, it also acknowledges the struggles that are to be endured in striving to overcome our limits.