The God particle
Eddie Clemens
9 April - 10 June 2010

At first glance, the arbitrary placement of a skill-saw at rest within The Kiosk suggests a work in progress. Perhaps a premonition of the pending tramway extension, where The Kiosk will be slightly repositioned as well as redesigned.

A skill-saw is an essential builder’s/handyman’s tool. Clemens’ RYOBI cordless skill-saw within The Kiosk contains a laser alignment system, which helps ensure that its user can follow the path that s/he has drawn out in front. However it is a common belief that such helpful devices are not always accurate. In a competitive market place a product’s development often succumbs to the inclusion of superficial gimmicks and gadgetry evolutions in order to stand out from the crowd.

The initial perception that this arbitrarily placed skill-saw is that it appears to be broken. However, when you follow the path of its activated laser beam, which Clemens’ has in a ‘Home Improvement’ Tim Allen initiative beefed up, one realises that it’s perfectly aimed at ‘Nucleus’, Phil Price’s kinetic public sculpture which stands approximately 10 metres away.

The God particle, the title of Clemens’ work is the popularised abbreviation for Higgs’ boson, a theoretical particle that physicists think is responsible for mass in the universe. The recently constructed Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest particle accelerator, designed to smash subatomic particles together is hoped to uncover evidence of this.