Sculptural Figures

Here are some more wire figures. It's a subject I've explored on and off over the years. I made some similar works for my first solo show (the work at the end of this post), but wanted to try some different things a few years later. The pin work below and the group of figures were included in my graduation show in 2001 at COFA. The group show was called Mint. I went to the cd-rom catalogue to check on titles and found that the format is "no longer supported" I think it said. If you're planning a catalogue for a show, DO NOT go for anything digital/electronic/web-based if you want people to be able to see it in three years time!

I remember that this work was called Comfortably Numb, after the Pink Floyd song from The Wall. It was a wire figure stuffed with cotton wool and covered in silicone sealant, which then had thousands and thousands of pins stuck into it. Unfortunately the neck disappeared with all the pins stuck in! I left this on the street when I moved out of one apartment and it was snapped up by someone. God knows what happened to it. Hmmm... I've found a hard copy of my blog from a few years back, and this title is actually Relaxed and Comfortable, but the connection to needles is the same.





I don't recall the title of this work. It was refugee/detention centre themed (this was at the height of the Howard regime's anti-refugee policies). The wire in these ones was covered in papier-mâché which was burnt and coated with a number of layers of shellac. They stood in a layer of sand. Oh, maybe it was called United We Stand? Something like that... Something to do with solidarity? No, I've found this title, too. It's actually Amicus Humani Generis. I'm not sure where I got that title from. It means "friend of the human race." I assume I was being ironic...


This is the first of this type of work that I made. It's called Schadenfreude, and I wrote about it here. I didn't include a full-length shot in that post so I'm showing it again here. It was covered with resin which made it very shiny. I wanted to avoid that in the work above, so used shellac.