Sunday, January 21, 2007

Art Show: Ricky Swallow

On my last exploration tour through Hackney, I found a couple of good shows in Vyner Street, the most impressive being Ricky Swallow's wood carvings. The sculptures of this Australian artist and Venice Biennale representative are a result of extraordinary craftsmanship. There are arms, shoes and other small scales pieces mounted on the wall or positioned on the floor.

My favourite is 'Younger than Yesterday', a skull that grows barnacles out of its vessel. Both outstandingly beautiful and disturbing at the same time. Swings and balances. Giving and taking. "The deterioration of the skull's former life becomes the root from which the barnacle's macabre decoration pushes forward and flourishes." It definetely invokes some scary thoughts on brain tumour and the notion of getting older.

What a shame that the gallery rep on the day was very uncommunicative - otherwise a nice conversation could have blossomed...(post note: as happened at the current exhibition:-)


Until 21 December 2006 at Modern Art

3 comments:

Luca Tripaldi said...

Always on the lookout for good artblogs and yours is one of the better ones around. I'm adding you to my blogroll.

Marcus Druen said...

Thanks Luca! Really appreciate your feedback. New stuff from the weekend will be on here in the next 1-2 days. Cheers, Marcus

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