In 'The Heads of Snowmen', Sylvester presents a series of multi-coloured, hand-blown glass heads, embellished with cast bronze features, including carrot noses, button eyes and a cheeky smoke. Severed and decapitated from their glossy bodies, Sylvester’s snowmen heads appear frozen-in-time, underscoring the artists ongoing interest in how death is presented in pop culture.
NTRO Output Category
- Original Creative Work : Visual artwork
Place
Melbourne, AustraliaVenue
Neon ParcNTRO Publisher
Neon ParcStart Date
2024-02-01End Date
2024-02-24Medium
glass, bronzeResearch Statement
In 'The Heads of Snowmen', I presented twenty multi-coloured, hand-blown glass heads, embellished with cast bronze features, including carrot noses, button eyes and a cheeky smoke. Severed and decapitated from their glossy bodies, the snowmen heads appear frozen-in-time, underscoring the artists ongoing interest in how death is presented in pop culture. At once a beacon of seasonal festivity, the severed snowman head is both repellent and captivating, both redolent of atavism and caught up in the story of what is natural and inevitable; it is created, it melts, it dies. In short, the essence of what it means to be human.
This was my first exhibition using glass, a completely new discipline and learning experience. Working along side three glass blowers over a period of weeks we learnt how to incorporate bronze pieces I had made into the glass, which themselves had never attempted before.
The research significance was that this was the first of two back-to-back major solo exhibitions at Neon Parc in Melbourne, something not attempted in its' over 20 year history. The idea was to place a large institutional exhibition spread out of two shows to cover almost two months. The exhibition was a sell out, and further work was made to handle a back catalogue of orders. Further works were then made in the same style to be shown exclusively at Sydney Contemporary Art Fair in September, 2024.Size or Duration of Work
twenty sculptures of glass and bronze
