Adrian Salvatore, football, ceramic, Arts Project Australia, AAMI Park
Summary
Melbourne-based Adrian Salvatore has been working with Arts Project Australia studio since 2011. His practice primarily comprises works using coloured pencil on paper, although he also creates three-dimensional ceramic works such as this. A topic of great interest to the artist is sporting culture, notably those athletes who inflame the hearts of sports nuts everywhere. Salvatore's consideration of sport in his practice is driven by his own not-insignificant history of sprinting, which began when he joined Little Essendon Athletics as a child.
AAMI Park, on the banks of the Yarra just east of city centre, is one of the newest major sporting stadiums in Melbourne. While it is a multi-sport venue, it is chiefly associated with football (soccer), a sport with an ever-growing following of fervent fans. Salvatore's small, ceramic work is a resolutely handmade yet carefully constructed rendition of the slick, high-tech stadium that hosts crowd-drawing matches. While it may not demonstrate clean lines and precision geometry of the original, Salvatore's sculpture invokes all the embodied passion of the fans who flock to watch their heroes battling it out on the Melbourne field.
