For nearly three decades, renowned Western Australian sculptor Peter Dailey has played a significant role in Perth’s distinctive sculptural scene, exhibiting both nationally and internationally, creating a number of prominent public works, including the very popular concrete couch in the grounds of Fremantle Art Centre. So it seems fitting that Dailey was chosen as the second artist to be commissioned by ‘The Syndicate’; a philanthropic model initiated by WA collector Lloyd Horn where participating syndicate members commission an artist to develop a body of work.
Dailey worked for two years producing an outstanding collection of visually engaging and thought-provoking bodies of work, consisting of ten life-sized figurative sculptures, collectively titled, ‘Apparition: The Syndicate II’, to be held at Perth’s Fremantle Art Centre.
Dailey’s work has a strong sense of narrative and contemporary mythology, forged in a theatrical aesthetic reminiscent of stage sets. His figures have taken up residence in the main gallery, which has been darkened and specially-lit creating an almost dramatic setting. The viewer is drawn to the technically sophisticated and highly detailed mechanisms – entertained by the theatrics and educated by its ‘science show’ quality. The transparent figures make it seem as though you are at a peepshow as the hidden and unknown, the masked and unfamiliar, are revealed.
Dailey’s sculptures are simultaneously introspective and universal in their themes. Employing an intricate mix of materials and approaches, his figures exist in physical landscapes – both internal and external – contemplating the cultural, economic, political and environmental mechanisms that they belong to. Dailey’s mythologies are drawn from the notion of an internal structure connecting the nature of all things and whether such a concept can be understood through scientific processes alone. Throughout his career, Dailey has posed the question: “where does such scientific inquiry leave an intuitive or instinctive approach to the exploration of these notions, and how far can humans manipulate nature without a degree of randomness reasserting itself?” – this is exactly what ‘Apparition’ questions.
The ten sculptures produced for the exhibition are divided into two categories both in terms of materials and concept. Five works encased in cast Perspex reference the internal machinations of what it is to be human, such as biology or psychology. This can be seen in the form of man-made machineries substituting the role of a human heart, pills to enhance one’s health or a windmill churning one’s thoughts. Other works deal with external forces, such as politics. Throughout the collection is a reference to our reliance on the natural world, whether direct or circuitous, as bodies contain blooming flowers, limbs are occupied with stems, and feet are rooted, linking man to the earth, to nature itself.
Dailey’s work debates man’s intervention with nature and how it interferes with what we are and what we are a part of. He tries to address the plethora of ecological, psychosocial and individual moral crises caused by the proliferation and misuse of scientific knowledge and technological advances. The viewer is confronted with these concerns through Dailey’s exposure of the internal self and left to contemplate how the modern world has defined us. ‘Apparition’ ultimately asks the pivotal question: what does it mean to be human?
Fremantle Arts Centre
Until June 2, 2013
Perth
Abnegate, 2013, wood, foam, fibreglass, fabric, plastic and acrylic paint, 215 x 68 x 88cm
Alchemist, 2013, wood, perspex, stones, acrylic and oil paint, PETG, 180 x 59 x 41cm
Courtesy the artist and private collections.
Photograph by Eva Fernandez.
