Archie Moore, Fool's Gold, 2026,
from Remnants Of My Father, Pyrite, 12.4 × 10.5 × 11 cm, TCG023860
Pallion Art Collection
PYRITE
I’m standing alone, I’m watching you all. I’m seeing you sinking. I’m standing alone, you’re weighing the gold. I’m watching you sinking. Fool’s gold.
(‘Fools gold’, The Stone Roses)
I remember being handed a lump of quartz with traces of gold, and on another occasion pyrite – once by my father and another time by someone working for my father. I also remember people using ‘heart of gold’ as a sarcastic and disparaging remark towards someone, either for their naivety or for their insincerity.
All of my father’s possessions fitted into a not-very-large suitcase; he only wore second-hand clothes and he would put everyone else’s concerns before his own. He would say on many occasions that society needs to be more socialist. At times he would spruik the virtues of communism but would back down on that and confirm that socialism was a better political system – as if to say communism was a step too far.
Some days part of his pay would be a live sheep, which he would kill in the back shed and then butcher into food that would keep us fed for a few weeks. Everything he did seemed to be not the easiest way to do things and later in life I wondered if it was about necessary hard work, kindness and care – or a penance he felt he needed to pay. When he scalded the cups, plates and cutlery with boiling water to kill germs, was he protecting all of us or first and foremost himself?
Whether true or false I’ll never know – very much as though there really is something of great worth buried under the dirt, waiting to be brought to the surface!
I’m standing alone, I’m watching you all. I’m seeing you sinking. I’m standing alone, you’re weighing the gold. I’m watching you sinking. Fool’s gold.
(‘Fools gold’, The Stone Roses)
I remember being handed a lump of quartz with traces of gold, and on another occasion pyrite – once by my father and another time by someone working for my father. I also remember people using ‘heart of gold’ as a sarcastic and disparaging remark towards someone, either for their naivety or for their insincerity.
All of my father’s possessions fitted into a not-very-large suitcase; he only wore second-hand clothes and he would put everyone else’s concerns before his own. He would say on many occasions that society needs to be more socialist. At times he would spruik the virtues of communism but would back down on that and confirm that socialism was a better political system – as if to say communism was a step too far.
Some days part of his pay would be a live sheep, which he would kill in the back shed and then butcher into food that would keep us fed for a few weeks. Everything he did seemed to be not the easiest way to do things and later in life I wondered if it was about necessary hard work, kindness and care – or a penance he felt he needed to pay. When he scalded the cups, plates and cutlery with boiling water to kill germs, was he protecting all of us or first and foremost himself?
Whether true or false I’ll never know – very much as though there really is something of great worth buried under the dirt, waiting to be brought to the surface!