Art can assume unusual forms but when intellect, interpretation and expression combine with a mix of unusual mediums stand by for some striking results. NOEL MURPHY reports …
KANGAROO spines in ice sculptures, albino Christs, orgasmic nuns in the sweet pain of religious ecstasy and bloody, dead animal carcasses and fetishism… if you thought contemporary art was dodging controversy, think again.
Sophia Hewson’s art is right at the cutting edge of it, with a kind of honeyed brutalism that challenges us on numerous fronts to think and rethink.
It’s among the most collectable in the country, a solid investment if you like, and it’s propelling the 28-year-old Geelong artist to the forefront of Australia’s art world with its shock value, intellectual rigour and focus on the human condition.
At first blush, Hewson’s art can be perplexing, bewildering. But its mix of painting, sculpture and photography _ with oils, resins, ice, animal organs, even hundreds and thousands _ can be riveting.
Add death, nudes, sex and religious themes, and you have all the ingredients for an orgiastic artistic experience that’s complex, confronting, even fun, all at once.
Hewson’s images can be a little mind-boggling, there’s no two ways about it. But, hey, that’s art.
Take the woman riding an inflatable dolphin in an overtly erotic pose. Critics have plumbed it for all its worth with Caravaggio, sex show fetish, mythological and nymph references.
And the man in white loincloth in a crucifixion pose with white fluid seeping from Christ-like stigmata, from her stunning Dy Dykrenore exhibition of 2010. That’s been read by critics for sperm and punishment for hedonism, and invites all manner of other interpretation too.
Take the other man in a loincloth, dangling upside down, in the same exhibition. Or the staggering ice sculpture embedded with a kangaroo spine Hewson’s unearthed on her parents farm at Lorne. Its visual presence alone is a feast but its meaning, again, mysterious and wide open to interpretation.
In fact, they’re all powerful, evocative, thought-provoking, metaphorical, but Hewson rarely offers clues to their significance – to the frustrated imaginings of critics forced to liken her taciturn nature to the mute brilliance of her images.
Read more in the latest edition of GC Magazine, out now.
