Wigley manipulates objects and materials to create poetic sculptural arrangements that generate meaning on the subject of loss, dis-location, and the temporary nature of things, a particular reflection of our times where nothing seems certain.
Aware of such precarity, some works attempt to order or make solid, as in ‘Utter’, a breath-cum-speech bubble cast in bronze, or his cast iron shoes and hats that suggest a memorialised readiness. Others admit transience, seen in the pairing of a stone and cast iron lightbulb held together by an elastic band, a gunpowder inscribed handkerchief, a shoe tip embedded in cut bread, or a flagpole held up by a suitcase; each aligned to the theme of Still Life.
This ‘stilling’ is also seen in Wigley’s video work, capturing the tension of suspended moments where the passage of time is slow and uneventful: the simple act of wearing a felt hat cast in iron, the quiet drowning in milk of a photographic self-portrait, or a wall mounted hat emitting a plaintive whistle, aware of its awkwardness, trying not to be present.
His work and language is always economical and restrained, alert to the moment when enough is just enough. It is full of pathos, poetry and wit, almost Keatonesque in its comic stone-faced formality, where the ‘set-ups’ are precise and deceptively simple, balancing hope and failure, belonging and loss.