This sculpture takes as a starting point Degas's influential sculpture The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer. Controversial when first shown in 1881, the wax sculpture was widely denounced both for its atypically realist portrayal of femininity and for its non-traditional use of media.
The sculpture is on a precarious balance to suggest the many difficulties a dancer encountered both on the stage and off, often having to work as a prostitute to make ends meet.
Courtesy of Australian Galleries
wood, wax, pigment, hessian, tulle, metal, slate
70 x 60 x 31 cm
Finalist
Judges of the 2012 Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize: Guido Belgiorno-Nettis AM (Trustee of the Art Gallery of NSW and Director of the Transfield Foundation), Natalie Wilson (Assistant Curator of Australian Art at the Art Gallery of NSW) and Professor Janice Reid AM (Vice-Chancellor of the University of Western Sydney and Trustee of the Art Gallery of NSW).
Download PDF (1.7 MB)