Unlike mending broken china, Calvert's work is not simply a case of putting the pieces back together again in order, hoping that the cracks won't show. Instead, it's a fragmentation that frustrates order and alludes to more devastating unforseen events such as the initial impact of a car accident or violent explosion, atomising form.
The artist's painstaking reconfiguration is not a construction akin to jigsaw puzzles or Lego; it's more precarious and desperate than that - these surrogate components aren't designed for reconstruction. They don't return to their starting point but are transformed into an image shaped through longing.
The poignancy in these works lies in Calvert's forcing into place a concretion of fragments heartbreakingly lost to one another - a process of reconciliation that’s essentially flawed from the moment it begins.
toughened broken glass
30 x 30 x 10 cm
Finalist
Judges of the 2013 Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize: Nick Mitzevich (Director of the Art Gallery of SA) and Professor Ian Howard (College of Fine Arts, UNSW).
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