Tag Archives: sculpture

Indian craft is set in stone

S. Swaminathan giving his learned analysis of the Mamallapuram sculptures.

S. Swaminathan giving his learned analysis of the Mamallapuram sculptures.

While we’ve been subject to gruesome images from the Isis insurgency, the latest scenes of destruction to Assyrian stone artifacts are particularly shocking. Even if vile in lack of regard for humanity, the beheading of an ‘enemy’ at least has the logic of war. Whereas the smashing of ancient sculptures seems inexplicable. Why destroy our link to the classical civilisations of Mesopotamia?

As Guy Rundle wrote in response to this devastation “…without our heritage and a commitment to it, there is no ground to life, to meaning.” We can keep plugging away in life, paying bills and meeting deadlines, but in the end we are faced with the question: what lasting culture do we have to pass on to the future?

Beings of the 21st century salute the beings of the 9th century Pallava dynasty.

Beings of the 21st century salute the beings of the 9th century Pallava dynasty.

Set against what is happening in Syria, the persistence of Mamallapuram over the centuries is particularly edifying. Mamallapuram is a town near Chennai which hosts a continuing tradition of stone carving since the Pallava dynasty in the 3rd century.  I visited as part of a jury for the Cities of World Craft (with Dr Ghada Hijjawi-Qaddumi and Mrs. Ruby Ghuznavi ), which endorses the efforts of particular cities to sustain their craft traditions.

I was impressed to find in Mamallapuram a thriving community of nearly 500 families working with a mixture of hand and machine tools. It’s certainly exacting work, but the pay seems reasonable and there appears to be a sense of community. Coming from Australia, where we are so sensitive about occupational health and safety, I worried that the artisans were not wearing masks. But nor do they wear helmets on motorbikes on busy Chennai roads. Fortunately, the state of Tamilnadu has universal health care.

Working with hand and machine tools.

Working with hand and machine tools.

 

The chisel has to be sharpened hourly. There are men employed full time just to keep them sharpened all day.

The chisel has to be sharpened hourly. There are men employed full time just to keep them sharpened all day.

The sculpture college seemed to provide a broad education which included not only the craft techniques but also related cultural knowledge such as Sanskrit. This teaching is important to understand the cultural context which gives meaning to their work.

Students at the sculpture school at Mamallapuram.

Students at the sculpture school at Mamallapuram.

There is relatively little design innovation apart from miniature sculptures for tourists. The design principles are taught from the ancient principles of Shilpi Shastra, which determine the various proportions of the body parts.

The Shilpi Shastra book wtih all the correct proportions for statues

The Shilpi Shastra book wtih all the correct proportions for statues

 

So an eye is shaped like a fish?

So an eye is shaped like a fish?

Much of the work now comes from foreign clients. Some of it involves public art of sculptures carved from photographs sent over email. But there is growing demand from the Indian migrant communities who need these statues for their new temples.

Here, the sculpture becomes more than an art object. It is an idol to be worshiped. This is evident in the many customs associated with the sculptures. During construction, the sculptures are usually covered with sand as a mark of respect. Here is one that is exposed for us to see.

A large statue is usually submerged in sand to protect it from profane eyes before going to the temple.

A large statue is usually submerged in sand to protect it from profane eyes before going to the temple.

They are also lovingly cared for, such as a weekly beauty treatment with coconut oil!

Freshening up a statue with coconut oil

Freshening up a statue with coconut oil

But most remarkable is the ceremony the accompanies their entry into the temple, when their sacred status is activated. Here it is described:

These sculptures lack religious significance until its eyes are “opened” or sculpted (Nayanonmilanam). The eyes need to be opened at the temple itself, with a gold needle and a silver needle, both of which need to be provided by the temple or the client (and can’t be reused.) The right eye is opened with the gold needle, which evokes the image of the sun. The left eye is opened with the silver needle, evoking the image of the moon. A silver hammer is used as an aid as well. This is a job that only sthapatis are allowed to do, so if there is no sthapati in the area of the temple, either Mr. Shanmugan or Mr. Subramanian need to hitch on a plane to the locale and sculpt the eyes themselves. “I’ve been to Mauritius, Australia, Malaysia…” Mr. Subramanian noted. After the eyes are opened, only priests of the temple can touch the sculpture; the ownership of the sculpture (both religious and literal) has passed on from the sthapatis to the priests.

Malarvannan, Apoorva. 2014. The Life of Mahabalipuram: Pulsing Stories Trapped in Stone.

Opening the eyes on a statue

Opening the eyes on a statue

But it doesn’t stop there. Here Dr Santhosh Babu, chairperson of the Tamilnadu Handicrafts Development Corporation, translates the procedure that follows:

One presumes that the pleasure in its own craftsmanship eases the shock for the idol of its coming into existence. Along the way, this ritual changes our relation to an object which is looked at to something that can look at us.

These are the kind of magic processes that are lost when a craft object becomes just another consumer product. For those of us who are not Hindu, the challenge is to find other ways of activating our objects to they can give meaning to our world and the people we care for.

What should we do today? Would we hold a mirror up to your treasured craft object? Or would you prefer to post an image on Instagram? We have much to learn from the Indians about how to sustain a tradition.

Speaking up for voicelessness – new works by Olivia Pintos Lopez

The Prosopopoeias (Counihan Gallery, 23 January – 15 February, 2015) by Olivia Pintos-Lopez is an intriguing installation of enigmatic figures made from a combination of cast resin, metal armature, cotton, kid leather, linen, muslin, antique  lace, wool embroidery, brocade, buttons, beads, coral, teeth, bone, feather, metal,  seeds, shell, stick, gold leaf, cloves, lavender, photographs, thread.  The text is from the opening speech by Sarah Tomasetti and images of works are below.


Let’s start with the question on everyone’s lips, What is a prosopopoeia?

Wikipedia informs us thus

A prosopopoeia is a rhetorical device in which a speaker or writer communicates to the audience by speaking as another person or object.

Prosopopoeiae can also be used to take some of the load off the communicator by placing an unfavorable point of view on the shoulders of an imaginary stereotype. The audience’s reactions are predisposed to go towards this figment rather than the communicator himself.

(I think I would like one of those with me all the time to take the rap for my own unfavourable points of view.)

It is interesting that we are speaking of communication here because most of the figurines don’t have faces, let alone mouths. They seem to express a somewhat incoherent state of voicelessness, yet further on we read…

Quintilian writes of the power of this figure of speech to ‘bring down the gods from heaven, evoke the dead, and give voices to cities and states.’

And so via the transformative power of the prosopopoeia we move from this state of voicelessness to bringing down cities and states! (To interpret the idea loosely.)  And we do indeed encounter something utterly powerful and compelling in the way these figurines of humble size seem to give form to our own countless unexpressed longings and objections and passing moments of humour.

My first entry to this exhibition was via two of these figurines bought from Olivia’s last Melbourne exhibition and followed by an exchange of materials in which I gave her some gloves and hankies and other things from my grandmother’s collection to be repurposed.

Encountering this new body of work I am struck once again by a sense of connection, an obsessive feeling of needing to own certain pieces.  I see a lot of art and collect very little, – in fact sometimes as an artist I can wish not to have too many other voices around me – so to what can I put this down?  I think it is the uncanny way that the prosopopoeias seem to give expression to interior states, to literally bring them into being in some way that seems essential to ones inner life.  (I did notice a number of people prowling about as I was, mourning ones that were gone, and trying to make the next cathexis quickly before it too was snatched away.)

There is a sense that the gesture or feeling or unconscious state is literally found through making, and as Olivia has described it, at the point that it is fully realised, she stops, sometimes quite abruptly.  The last gesture or stitch or wrapped thread has been made, sometimes quite violently, and there is no need to go on.  Something has been made coherent, exists more solidly than before.  I would posit that the primary essentialness of the process is echoed in the strong response that is going on in the prowling viewers.

They are not primarily about making a thing of beauty.  They are more direct than this, more necessary.

Tegan Empson, Idol Moments by Christine Nicholls

Tegan Empson, Idol Moments, at Gallery 2, The JamFactory, Adelaide, 13 October – 29 November 2009

Reviewed for World Sculpture News by Christine Nicholls

Tegan Empson, 2007, Brown Bunny (h 53.4 cm, x d:16.5 cm x w 15 cm) and Grey Bunny (h:50 cm, d x 14.5 cm x w 19 cm).

Tegan Empson, 2007, Brown Bunny (h 53.4 cm, x d:16.5 cm x w 15 cm) and Grey Bunny (h:50 cm, d x 14.5 cm x w 19 cm).

Tegan Empson 'Grey Bunny' 2007 (50 cm high)

Glass artist Tegan Empson’s solo exhibition, Idol Moments, on show in Adelaide’s prestigious JamFactory Contemporary Craft and Design’s Gallery 2 in late 2009, deservedly garnered a good deal of public attention. The works that Empson included in Idol Moments are hand blown, sculpted and laminated ‘creatures’. Wheel-cut and sand-etched, with a surface-coated finish, these works evince a high level of technical skill and more than a smidgeon of sheer playfulness on the part of their youthful maker.

The glass works comprising Idol Moments included finely crafted glass rabbits, robots, and cats, all of which show influences of popular culture and contemporary media. To a very limited extent these charismatic, whimsical, quasi-anthropomorphic creations exemplify the ‘kawaii factor’ insofar as, on the surface at least, they appear to be childlike, vulnerable, harmlessly droll and emotionally needy. However Tegan Empsons’s glass ‘idols’ are more than simply ‘funny bunnies’ or ‘little cuties’. To some degree these works are infused with what at one level might be described as a ‘tiny-tots aesthetic’, but the sophisticated workmanship cleverly subverts such an understanding. The works that comprise Idol Moments are definitely not cloyingly cute in the ‘Hello Kitty’ mould, but neither are they mean and crafty. Rather, they are imbued with true innocence, purity and ingenuousness – categorically more Beatrix Potter than Bugs Bunny. Equally, the exhibition’s title, in part pun, partly bathetic juxtaposition, subtly undercuts the possibility of any uni-dimensional interpretation. There are levels of understanding Empson’s body of work, extending well beyond the superficial.

HiWired

HiWired

Tegan Empson 'HiWired' 2008 (31cm high), hand sculpted solid glass robot with hot-joined and UV laminated components and duro cane inclusions

Importantly, the leavening influences of Empson’s irony and light-hearted, quirky humour peppered with just a dash of old-fashioned camp, combine to prod her audience into thinking about the readiness of many our contemporaries to create ‘idols’ out of inappropriate, mundane, unworthy, or commonplace figures or objects, indeed out of practically anything at all. Tegan Empson’s unassuming ‘critters’ challenge the very notion of idolatry by their gestural simplicity and their humility of bearing.

So, in titling this group of works Idol Moments, Empson gently mocks the emptiness and ridiculousness of our society’s blind worship and adoration of objects, people or animals that are, in many instances, unremarkable or ordinary. The title is also an invitation to her audience to step back, for just a little while, and reflect upon this bizarre contemporary social phenomenon.

While in Idol Moments the absurdity of contemporary society’s appetite for celebrity and commodity fetishism may be the focus of Tegan Empson’s wry sense of humour, in the end it is the artist who has the last laugh. Empson’s signature hand blown works are beautifully made and finished and for these reasons they draw well-justified admiration. In creating such elegant, extremely covetable glass artworks, which are currently in high demand, Empson is unintentionally perpetuating the very phenomenon that she critiques.

In a final ironic twist, Sir Elton John recently purchased two of Tegan Empson’s glass bunnies (‘Brown Bunny’ and ‘Grey Bunny’) from a Sydney gallery. A propos of Idol Moments, there seems to be a certain poetic justice in that.

Bali carves up the Glick International Foundation

Made Leno works on a sculpture of Rodney Glick

Made Leno works on a sculpture of Rodney Glick

You come up with a brilliant idea. You find someone with the skills to realise that idea perfectly. You work out a fair price. While the person is completing the job, others discover your idea and start copying it. Should you try to stop them, or risk your singular idea now just being one of many? This is the problem that Rodney Glick found having his art made in Bali.

I think Rodney Glick is one of Australia’s most interesting artists. I’m usually left cold by conceptual work, but Glick’s installations always leave me with a strong sense of non-being – others might call it spiritual. His public art at Subiaco Station using close circuit cameras created something transcendent from an everyday commute.

But more than just an individual artist, Glick also creates spaces for others to create in. He first came to prominence in the eastern states with the Glick International Collection, a purely fabricated international collection along with fictional artists and writers. Following that, he established a colleague Marco Marcon a residency program in a small wheat town in the middle of nowhere – Kellerberin. I guess while so many artists on the west coast (and east coast) of Australia are striving to be somewhere (i.e., Venice or New York), Glick is attracted to the nowhere places. There it’s possible to construct something new.

I’ve never connected Rodney with craft before, but his most recent series has strong relevance to new practices involving collaboration with traditional artisans.

Rodney Glick is one of an increasing number of artists working with Indonesian artisans, particularly wood carvers. For a recent Perth exhibition, Rodney commissioned a Balinese wood carver Made Leno from Kemenuh south of Ubud. He asked Made Leno to carve a life-size version of the multi-armed Hindu god, but based on likeness of Western figures, including himself. This involved quite a technical leap, as traditionally these statues had been made only of iconic divine figures. There was quite prolonged and open negotiation about price and cultural sensitivity, and with time a beautiful carved figure began to emerge.

Glick was concerned that these works would be seen as disrespectful. However, when he inquired about this, he was surprised to see how warmly they were received: ‘While the sculptures do show Western people in poses that suggest Hindu gods, or in one case Buddha, they have been generally seen in Bali not as suggesting that their gods have been belittled, but rather as suggesting a divine presence that is in everyone and that links all humanity.’

Made Leno negotiates with Chris Hill about the carving job

Made Leno negotiates with Chris Hill about the carving job

Second time around, Made Leno works with a written contract - much better

Second time around, Made Leno works with a written contract - much better

But there was one problem – though it was more a result of the work’s positive reception, than any complaint. A nearby stone carver started also to make likenesses. Local Balinese soon started to inquire whether they could have statues made of their family in this manner. Rodney became concerned about this. According to his collaborator Chris Hill, ‘We have talked to the carver about this and he accepts our point of view that Rodney should retain some control over works done according to his idea, not because he wanted some financial reward but to protect the integrity of the concept.’ They cited the uncontrolled production of Australian Aboriginal artefacts in Bali as a sign of how copying can get out of hand.

Rodney is not dogmatic about this control. He has become involved in many other projects in Bali. As well as showing the work locally, he has helped start up valuable agricultural projects.

But this case does reveal a contradiction between the Balinese and Western creative economies. Artists like Rodney are attracted to Indonesia partly because of the ease with which it is possible to get things done. Artisanship there doesn’t come with legal strings attached: no contracts are necessary – it’s a personal thing . Yet taken to its limit, such a system can undermine the Western creative economy that artists like Rodney depend on. If the market is flooded with imitations of his work, then the one-off art works are in danger of losing value.

These figures formed a series called 'Everyone' that were included in the God-Favoured exhibition at Lawrence Wilson Gallery.

These figures formed a series called 'Everyone' that were included in the God-Favoured exhibition at Lawrence Wilson Gallery.

Rodney has to survive as an artist too. He’s one of Australia’s most creative and interesting artists, but he’s certainly not wealthy.

So what’s the ethical course of action here? Does Rodney have the right to prevent unauthorised use of his idea? In China, manufacturers can offer discount rates to produce branded goods because they get tooled up then to produce cheap imitations free of royalties. This proves unsustainable – in the end, everyone loses.

In addition, where do we place Glick’s work in agricultural development? Is that just a side effect resulting from his human response to the world he discovered. While Glick would most likely dismiss this as just his own personal intervention, is it possible to see this contribution as integral to his work, in the same way that we might see the Fair Trade label as part of the experience of eating the chocolate inside its wrapping?

I guess that we ask all these questions is part of the value of Rodney’s work. It’s an open dialogue at the moment. Lena Mado has been commissioned for a new series of works. Something’s working.