St. Frigo, 1996

Anne Ellegood:  St. Frigo is a sculpture Durham made in 1996 that consists simply of a small refrigerator.

Narrator: Anne Ellegood.

Anne Ellegood: What for me is so important about this work is it marks a vital turning point in Durham's practice in which he moves from incorporating stone into the sculpture, as he had done with other natural materials, such as wood, animal skulls, feathers, fur, to using stone itself as a sculpting tool. So in this case, he was doing a residency in France. For ten mornings, he essentially stoned this refrigerator in a courtyard that was adjacent to the studio building where he had been working. He went outside every morning and threw stones at the refrigerator, essentially turning it into a kind of martyred figure.

The experience of stoning the white, clean refrigerator really for him turned into this process in which he felt that he was stoning a body. He began to feel sad and somewhat guilty about stoning this refrigerator, and later titled her St. Frigo.