Five standing sculptures are grouped together. A mixture of ancient and modern, their Classical qualities are subverted by unexpected scale and their busy extruded concrete surfaces, recalling bizarre grotesques in...
Five standing sculptures are grouped together. A mixture of ancient and modern, their Classical qualities are subverted by unexpected scale and their busy extruded concrete surfaces, recalling bizarre grotesques in a grotto. Their features are obscured, so they appear absorbed in their own activity, pushing the effort of reflection back on to the viewer, as the eye travels into the complicated coils.
Darbyshire plays with the language of design where notions of perfection, mass production, consumerism and high-tech finish are subverted by this hand 3D printing process. In a tangled combination of mechanical and hand finish, taste and value are scrutinised alongside the imperfections.
Each piece is carved from foam, then cast in a mould and piped from the same volume of 100 litres concrete, supported by a steel armature. Extrusion is a pre-digital form of automatism which, in the dismantling of the perfection of repetition, produces items that simply refuse to be the same.