Artworks2001Wood ‘n’ Melon

A bronze cast of a melon, half painted in realist style with the skin surface of a classic watermelon, the other half blended into a briar wood paint pattern similar to that of an old fashioned pipe like that used by Magritte. The is an alchemy piece. It is the transmutation of a melon into briar wood (traditionally used to make pipes) but then you realize that it is actually made of bronze. The layers of material meaning multiply, until you are no longer sure of what you are looking at. The Artist has made many pieces of art inspired by the street. Cardboard boxes (‘Brillo’, 2002), bin bags in bronze (‘Bag’, 2001) and ‘Nomad’ (a figure in a sleeping bag cast in bronze). All these works are questioning value and status. The melon pieces are quirkier than that, watermelons having saucy, colloquial associations because of their size and succulence. But they are also a vegetable-like fruit often put on the floor outside shops because of their size. An urban boulder. The melon is not indigenous to this country and therefore represents the exotic: the unknown.