Spaceship model, Ricky Swallow, 1998-1999, Sculpture, Turntable
Summary
Over the last two decades or so, Ricky Swallow has become one of Australia's most renowned contemporary artists. His practice ranges over sculpture, installation and works on paper, although it is for his technically precise and visually arresting sculptures that he is best known. These works of art are nothing short of studies in objecthood, translation and materiality, illustrating the artist's skill as a draftsman and fabricator. Swallow is also something of a collector and, if one is to look at the sweep of his work, the object-based, cumulative practice of collecting has surely impacted on his studio practice.
Swallow's three works in the Art and Heritage Collection – 'Incident @ Dinosaur Park', 'Great White Shark Park' and 'I've Pursued You Half Way Across the Galaxy' – comprise intimate, kinetic tableaux constructed on vintage turntables. Unlike Swallow's carved-wood sculptures, created one meticulous cut at a time, the measured removal of wood building the form, these mixed-media sculptural scenes are created through an additive process, with collected portable turntables of another era forming their physical bases. The mechanical technology of the bases allows for the animation of one element in each of the three futuristic scenes.
The works were shown in 'Signs of Life', the 1999 Melbourne International Biennial, which was a City of Melbourne initiative, supported by Arts Victoria, the Department of Premier and Cabinet, and the Ian Potter Museum of Art. The exhibition took place in various venues across Melbourne. Swallow's miniature scenes exploited the power of scale by being displayed on a 'window plinth' in a lofty central city building, with the receding city spooling out many, many metres below.
