Artist Nina Grey
Accession number 1994-32i
Nina Grey’s bronze and wood vertical sculpture is topped by a star and tailed by a synergistic tree root encircling the sleeping Jacob over whom the angels descend and descend between earth and heaven. Jacob is resting on his journey away from home into an unknown future and this dream is confirmation that, despite the conflicted circumstances of his departure, God is with him on his journey. In Grey’s sculpture there is a direct connection in a vertical line between the sleeping Jacob and the height of heaven.
Beyond this moment, this place and this dream, Jacob will find himself and find a family before, much later, returning and reconciling with his brother. The dream enables a curtain to be drawn back which allows Jacob to see that wherever he goes, God is with him; not because God goes where Jacob goes, but because all is in the hand of God and God is “an infinite sphere, whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere”. Jacob’s dream gives him the confidence to press on towards a better future.
