The Greatest – Edition of 15

The Greatest – by Cedric Christie

Limited-edition of 15
Etched phenolic resin snooker balls on steel bar
2023

‘Two snooker balls adorn a strip of steel, the pink ball etched with the word CLAY, in black, the brown with ALI, in white. The words at first register in a cryptic way as the brain grapples to form cogent associations. Perhaps ‘CLAY’ references the sculptures building material, and ‘ALI’ is short for ‘aluminium’? Is one ball made from clay and the other metal? This would be a neat trick, successfully diverting our neurological impulse to identify objects from memory. Yet, given further thought another salient connection is made. Add a capital letter and the words become names; Clay as in Cassius? Ali as in Muhammad’?

‘ The Greatest’ represents a confluence of emotional and conceptual responses to the object at hand, triggering both aesthetic and political tropes in a concisely arranged set. A myriad of connections are forged and projected from the cryptic text ‘CLAY’ and ‘ALI’ that split the pack like a snooker break. Ideas bounce and ricochet off one-another as we try to fix on a single reading. The shiny sphere is such a pure form, perching elegantly on the toughened steel like a monolith of meaning or a trophy of the mind. Lightly touching upon linguistics, aesthetics, religion, race, and politics in one simple array, Christie’s masterpiece is a crisp evocation of disparate and pleasurable associations, a synergy of poignant delights.’

AL 2024 (Image by Paul Tucker)