Sculpsit (2006)
Sculpsit, fabric on plaster, 2006, Inaugural Exhibition, Roger Williams Contemporary, Auckland
‘Sculpsit’, 2006, combines playful and bodily approximations as was the case with ‘Push Me Pull You’ from 2005. Twelve elements (six pairs) span the walls surface in horizontal formation. The artist has made impressions of all the pairs of his body that he can bash into clay: the deepest impressions he can physically make —his left and right heels, knees, arse, elbows, wrists inside and outside. These impressions are cast in plaster and covered with fabric. The forms appear as close approximations of the body but, at first, not clearly identifiable. In that they are created by direct contact with the body they share a certain similarity with how the body is commonly represented but also an abstraction by virtue of their part-body associations. In this sense ‘Sculpsit’ operates between the conditions of similarity and contact with the body. It is not exactly a representation of the body but more an embodiment of the body