The Weight of the Door references a bronze door handle on the Le Corbusier designed Ronchamp chapel, France (1954).
This work explores the idea of collapsing time between the past and the present and the continued influence of modernism today. In contemporary art and architecture, the impact of modernism is often portrayed as a historical millstone with no place in a post-modernist world. Although typified as a modernist icon, Ronchamp chapel is an example of Le Corbusier stretching modernism in new ways by utilising site-specificity and organic architecture.
This work continues a series started in 2013, using modernism as reference. Since 2018, there has been a focus on fragments of architecture designed by Jane Drew and Le Corbusier. Through these works, I have been exploring the idea of translation as appropriation as defined by Nicholas Bourriaud. This involves a recognition of mutual influence between the appropriated object and the new object, the artist acting as a conduit between the past and the present.
This weight invites us to feel its heft and by that action open the door to the past and present.
bronze
6.5 x 31.5 x 6.5 cm
Finalist
Judges of the 20th Anniversary Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize: Dr Lara Strongman (Director Curatorial and Digital, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia), Joanna Capon OAM (Art Historian, Curator and Industrial Archaeologist) and Jenny Kee AO (Artist and Fashion Designer).
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