Nicole De Brabandere

This series responds to the figurative strangeness of the bust convention. I take the formal ways that busts are sculpturally 'framed' in an often dismembering abstraction as an invitation to further abstract the relation between form and figure. This abstraction emerges by emphasizing the abstract edges of the bust form as a formal potential or by modeling the figures in anticipation of the glaze surface, to appear as though they were pressed into form by its thick, opaque consistency. Both of these approaches complicate the difference between interior and exterior and between surface and form. This process undermines the function of the bust as the commemorative capture of an individual portrait in favour of making visible the dynamic representational potentials within in the bust convention.

This approach to the convention of the bust was developed in relation to my research into the popularity, aesthetics and fabrication techniques of Staffordshire display objects of the early 19th century, and how they coincided with new concepts and practices of subjectivity in the period. The paper is available here: 

http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/csrj/article/view/5075

From Left: Hair Bust (2009) and Bubble Bust (2009)

From Left: Cabbage Bust 2 (2009) and Socket Bust (2009)