BDS Sculpture Prize for outstanding folio
I SAY I HAVE BEEN A STRONG LOVER explores the paradoxical experience of desire and its effects on the lover. Encompassing at once absence and presence, pleasure and pain, desire is described for the first time as bittersweet – glukupikron – by Sappho, a prolific Archaic Greek poet. The work itself draws its title from a verse in one of her fragmented poems (88b, as translated by Anne Carson). I seek to investigate the complex experience of eros, allowing material and conceptual dichotomies to converge in my attempt at sculpting desire – this force that pushes apart and pulls together.
I am an emerging multidisciplinary artist based in Naarm (Melbourne). My practice spans sculpture, writing, book-binding and jewellery. My works seek to explore the space in-between, allowing contrasting materials and themes to converge into one. Differences between violence and tenderness, pain and pleasure collapse in an unlikely harmony between opposite forces. Drawing inspiration from the world around me and my encounters with it, my works are introspective, intimate, and therefore often stem from personal experiences. Through their making, my pieces cross the threshold between private life and public practice. In my effort to sculpt these instances and feelings, it is my hope that the resulting works will also resonate with others in a space where individual and collective experiences meet.
instagram: @second__place_