H 30 W25cm. Coloured slips, E/W glaze; metal and twine additions; opening drawers.

From Neolithic times, the fertile earth was regarded as female. Mother Earth is firmly rooted in the ground, her right foot growing from it. Her body has seed drawers (containing apple pips) which, following Dali’s interpretation of Freud, also house her subconscious desires. The drawer in her skull has a key in the keyhole ear, so the secrets of her mind can be unlocked in self-discovery, or shut away permanently and the key hidden in the drawer of her breast. The drawer handle in her belly is a metal ring piercing the navel, marking the pain of separation after birth. On her elongated buttock – a Dalian phallic symbol on which she has turned her back – an apple sits alongside an apple core; she tolerates man’s devouring her fruit so that the seeds can be released.