355mm Height

The Liberators are watchful dogs, guardians of your secrets, woes, and worries. They are linked to various ritual practices that already exist, but with a new purpose and meaning created for a modern society living in turbulent times. ​

Their origins lie in Egyptian Shabti dolls where figurines were buried with the dead to take care of physical activities in the afterlife. The Liberators are here for the living, they are there to take your mental dealings and offer relief here and now. They also relate to the ritual of Guatemalan worry dolls which were designed for children to keep under their pillows at night, giving them the wisdom and knowledge to eliminate their worries in their dreams.
​
They collect all your unwanted thoughts, desires, and secrets. Personal anxieties are written on a small piece of paper, rolled up like a scroll and then posted into the torso of the black dog, where the figurine holds these thoughts so that each person can let their anxieties go. It is like giving the black dog back its thoughts, the act of transference from inner mind to outer world object, ejecting the unnecessary internal struggles back into the dog, literally!

Whanganui artist Angela Tier holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts with distinction.

Angela’s sculptural works are predominately hand built using the coiling technique, in which coils of clay are gradually stacked and joined one on top of the other. “I like working in the coils as it's a very old technique.”