Like the temples of Egypt which one approached in various stages, as in a walk down a straight passageway through a row of tall columns, their parallel shadows making a pattern on the ground, or a line of seated sphinxes leading to a succession of halls and finally to the roofed temple, the sanctum sanctorium or holy of holies. the visitor approaches this inscape through several stages. One of the first passes through the two-sided Arch. In the sculptor's own words, A pre-requisite for the male acolytes to enter the Temple was to pass through Her. I chose to depict Her, the distillation of feminine as two giant clitoris shapes forming the sides of Gothic arch.
Symbolically, we enter through her into the world of the Phallic. Then, all at once, the temple visitor, as in a dream, finds himself accosted on either side by a series of three six-foot-high bronze replicas of armalite bullets. The formidable Bronze Bullets what could be a more eloquent symbol of male power? They both attract with their cylindrical gold-like bodies and gleaming tips, and repel as symbols of man's domination and absolute power in the extreme-- the universal warrior assuming the Roman pater familias' perogative over life and death. The physical body of flesh and bone is limp and vulnerable before these implacable weapons of Shiva, God of Destruction. Could this imply the artist's ambivalent obsession with power?
They lead us to a door beyond...
The door is the Angel Death, an upright stone panel divided into two equal sections and bifurcating into equidistant points from the center. Passing straight down the middle and projecting beyond the inverted traingle at the upper end is a slender and elegant bronze spear, Shiva's weapon of Destruction. On both sides of te stone panel, the torso of an angel in low relief, spreads out its large ribbed wings over the universe. Its half-body is surrounded at the waist by a circular fairy ring of omphali and various creatures, while the field around sprouts with mushrooms.
Again, this work is all in white, except for the spear of bronze and the green and brown glass shards of broken beer shards of broken beer and wine bottles, like an anti-burglar device lining the borders of walls. The achromatic white serves to mute the emotional content of the work and maintains it on a solemn but quiet, legiac level. Because of her consistent use of white, Agnes' sculptures are never shrill, refusing to exploit the latent emotionalism of the work, and the cool, even tenor lends them elegance.