Exhibition: Secret Society - a Sculptural Banquet

Exhibition at Pitzhanger Manor, Ealing, London until 9th June 2013. An installation of 64 plaster busts at a plaster 'banquet'. www.kathydalwood.com See the review at Art & Design blog. YATZER www.yatzer.com/Kathy-Dalwood-Pitzhanger-Manor About the Plaster Bust Collection - 21st century re-interpretations of the historical portrait bust. The collection is a contemporary response to the traditionally sculpted figurative statues and busts of the 18th and 19th centuries but rather than sculpting in clay or stone, the busts are made by direct casting from real things. To construct the original sculpture from which the plaster casts are taken, I first ‘collage’ together all kinds of materials and found objects – fabrics, haberdashery, model buildings and vehicles, plastic packaging, corrugated card, paper, electrical and plumbing parts and much else. The plaster casts made from these originals pick up an amazing amount of texture and detail giving the sculptures a strange air of realism. The idea of placing architectural monuments, iconic landmarks and random objects on the headdresses and costumes was inspired by the intriguing 18th century fad of decorating hats with very large scale, incongruous objects - famously Marie Antoinette adorned a hat with a huge ship in full sail. The references in terms of imagery are quite diverse but all are linked through my perception of certain objects or forms as being very sculptural in nature - whether a piece of architecture, a bulldozer, a jet fighter or a book or the extreme three-dimensional headgear and costumes designed by the likes of Junya Watanabe or Alexander McQueen. Unexpected juxtapositions of theme and scale are also an important element of the sculptures. The Banquet For the exhibition of busts at Pitzhanger Manor – which was Sir John Soane’s ‘country’ retreat – I made a plaster banquet as a way of creating a ‘live’ event for them. Although at a glance seemingly glamorous and luxurious, in fact all the banquet objects are cheap, every-day items like plastic flowers, fruit and cutlery, beer cans, paper plates, charity shop glasses and discarded packaging such as take-away cups, chocolate boxes and cigarette packets. Coating these disparate items in plaster gives them not only uniformity but also an air of sophistication. But in fact this is a kind of ‘anti-luxe’ which has become a key concept as the busts collection has developed.