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Tricolor Centaur

Acrylic on Timber Sculpture, 19 December 2001, 600mm high
Tricolour Centaur
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Tricolor Centaur

Today I finished the ‘Tricolour Centaur (French Flag Centaur), so named by Kim Tonelli because it uses the red, white and blue of the French Flag, plus a pink and black.

This sculpture follows the imagery of the paintings with a series of eyes and suggestions of ‘face’ mapped across the Centaur form. For me, it is like ‘Cubism in 3D’ in that the surface image mimics the multiple viewpoints of Cubism with the added element of a 3D sculptural form.

As a completed form, I find it difficult to look at. What I mean by this is that it is difficult to ‘see’ the form as a totality in a single view. Of course, I can ‘see’ the entire sculpture, it is simply that I have no coherence for the overall form. The sculpture is only coherent when I look at it in small segments.

This fits with the earlier sculpture ‘Seated Woman on Centaur’, the viewer is challenged to look at the 3D form and the 2D form simultaneously. In some places on the form, the image is merely on a single surface plane (ie. Flat paint on one flat surface), and in other places uses several planes to define itself (ie. flat paint on more than one surface). The gestalt that is set up then forces the viewer to flick their view back and forth between the form and the image.

Interestingly, with the sculpture ‘Seated Woman on Centaur’ sitting in front of me, as it has for the past few months, I can now ‘see’ it as a ‘coherent whole’, whereas I can’t do this with the newly completed form (not yet!).

This piece was exhibited at the Toorak Festival of Sculpture, 1 May to 30 May, Toorak Village Shopping Centre, Toorak Road, Toorak (Melbourne, Australia).

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