Truth, mood and character are often conveyed more strongly by the unconscious stances and gestures of the human body than by spoken word or facial expression. There may be no faces on the blanket sculptures of Marc Edwards, the hands may be simple shapes often bound fast, but it is this very featurelessness, this muteness, this lack of fine articulation, which seem to liberate the figures into a more potent expressiveness. Pinocchio's nose grew whenever he told a lie; cancer is sometimes said to be caused by the repression of truth. Are the shapes which emanate from the body of Neither a Truth Teller Nor a Liar speech balloons which will not detach themselves? Tumours? Either way, we feel the difficulties of being human. Bending Over Backwards is a piece which could be humorous but is also scary, implying as it does the extended and debasing level at which compromise has sometimes to be undertaken in order to ensure survival. The contained silence of these sculptures is given resonance by the use of grey blankets as a surface skin. 'I saw an image of a dead person lying on the side of the road,' says Edwards. 'He'd been knocked down and was covered by a blanket. It was an image that made sense - the blanket is a material that brings quite a complex meaning to the form it covers: it mystifies (by removing the object from our gaze), it warms, it toys with the notion that sculpture is largely about warming material - that once you begin to manipulate any material it becomes warm and sculptural.' The blankets Edwards uses are the cheapest on the market, to be seen stacked high in low-budget department stores. In life, blankets are used not only for bedding, but also in winter as cloaks or garments. In death, as Edwards observed, the blanket becomes a shroud, there to shield the living from the fact of death. More.. Sue Williamson and Ashraf Jamal in Art in South Africa - the future present