Grasp the Sparrow’s Tail takes its title from a tai chi sequence involving a series of subtle shifts in weight. At one point, one hand lightly brushes over the other before both hands draw back to push an invisible assailant. Like trying to pat one’s head while rubbing one’s stomach, the sequence depends on coordinating different movements.
The work itself resembles a piece of apparatus. Through a small porthole-like opening, a plaster cast of a rock turns slowly while a handkerchief embroidered with tiny flowers moves across its surface, gently caressing — or perhaps dusting — it. The two movements do not quite settle into perfect synchronisation, giving the action a halting, precarious quality that is slow, repetitive and oddly tender.
A number of plausible narratives coexist within the work, depending on whether you speak to Dunhill or O’Brien — and perhaps on their mood or the time of day. It may relate to their repeated attempts to master grasping the sparrow’s tail; to casting rocks more than twenty years ago; to finding unused handkerchiefs in a carved wooden box; to a remembered sequence from the Taviani brothers’ film Kaos; to the absurdity of Brexit; or to the Japanese art of stone appreciation.
It is a modest work asked to make room for rather a lot. In the end, Dunhill and O’Brien’s persistent problem — how to make sculpture together — has produced something in which making is reduced to the lightest of interactions.