Avow was made specifically for a small cupboard in the north lift of the greenwich foot tunnel. The tunnel from the Isle of Dogs to Greenwich is the venue for a series of shows entitled Cupboard Love, curated by Sue Cohen.

Avow is an altarpiece, a watchdog, shrine at the start of a ritual passage beneath the river.
In European mythologies the River Styx formed a boundary between the earth and the underworld, Charon being the ferryman who transported the souls across. In Japanese Buddhism the Sanzu River has an almost identical role, as does the Rasa in the Sanskrit Rig Veda.

Avow consists of three cases stacked into a tower to form a totemic column. In the lowest, immersed in river water, is a silver hand on a lead plate, laid on a coiled rope. Above this are nine vertebrae corresponding to the circles described by Dante in The Inferno. They support a sword of vengeance which pierces the skin of a blackened funeral barque in the case above, from which the skull of a dog rises on a pillar of feathers.

Notes:

Silver is the metal sacred to mercury, messenger between humankind and the gods.
The silver hand is represents legendary British King Ludd Llaw Eraint who was supposed by Geoffrey of Monmouth to have saved Britain from a plague of dragons, rebuilt London after its post-Roman collapse and been buried at Ludgate Circus.

'Ludd' is likely to be derived from an early Celtic word 'Noudont-' meaning to catch, acquire, go hunting and is thereby certainly linked to the pre-Christian European cult of Nodens. Nodens was a god of healing, associated with the sea, with hunting and with dogs. The celtic is also semantic with 'sap' and 'moisture'.

The dog is the totemic animal of the 'great goddess' who appears in all world cultures in various guises, notably in the mediterranean as Diana the huntress.

Canary Wharf is named not after the small yellow bird but the Canary Islands of North Africa. They were first described by the romans as the Islas Canaris, The Isle of Dogs, after a particularly ferocious breed found there. It was felt by the wharf builders that this was an appropriate sentiment for the growing British Empire.

The dogs barque is of course registered in Barking.