Adrian Salvatore, football, Essendon, John Coleman, ceramic, Arts Project Australia,
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 Salvatore is the figures of sporting culture who inflame the hearts of sports nuts everywhere. Salvatore's consideration of sport is driven by his own significant history of sprinting, which began when he joined Little Essendon Athletics as a child.
One sporting figure Salvatore has immortalised is John Coleman, who had a brief but brilliant footy career with Essendon (playing only 98 matches but with a formidable goal-kicking record), and a man whom many consider one of the footy legends of all time. The glazed-ceramic sculpture shows Coleman kneeling with the ball held above his head. There is something almost religious in Salvatore's composition, perhaps indicating the awe with which Victorians, in particular, hold the code and its players. The tactile, handmade quality of this work truncate the distance between legend and fan, for this is not an emotionally austere official monument, but a heartfelt tribute to a local hero.
