In truth, this piece began as a commission involving, in my mind, penises. Two of my clients asked for a Tabernacle of Memories ‘box’ they could call their own. They are such beautiful men – in all senses of that word – and when I thought about them all I could see were dicks. I imagined myself in a triangle with them – not a physical menage à trois, but as a cipher for their sexuality. I am the Unknown Lover. I do think there is always a third aspect to a partnership. It can be an unspoken-of darkness. It can be one of the lover’s rediscovering their individuality. It can be what the soul of the relationship means to both people.

Over time, this work – this wormhole – evolved. My clients are also bibliophiles and so the phallus gradually yielded to the folio – represented here in the form of a wise old owl. He reads from a yellowed hymnal, which, if memory serves, was sourced from my undertaker parents. The owl’s body is made up of the hipbones of patient tortoises; brows are the vertebrae of a gemsbok. The ‘eyes’ are sparkling glass from a chandelier.

There is still a sexual story to be told, though, in the curve of the warthog’s tusks. These tusks were originally part of a project by an artist friend, stuffed into men’s underwear and exhibited. They take me back to a moment of sexual awakening as a teen, when I found a friend’s underpants at a sleepover and brought them instinctively to my nose. But he caught me in the act: shock, shame, guilt, darkness.

There’s a hint of the (love) triangle in the finished piece, set against a fleur de lis that represents the four points of a compass… a journey. The owl’s ancient reading glasses are sourced from – possibly appropriately – a pawn shop.

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Photography: Russel Smith / Text: Jonathan Bain