“The Collector”1985 Back

“The Collector”1985 Back

Mixed Media: resin, photographs, butterfly wings, finger nails, it is the size of a house brick. The sculpture is currently being displayed at Muswellbrook Regional Gallery. It inspires debate about love, power and entrapment. The Art work is inspired from John Fowles book “The Collector” where the male protagonist captures and keeps a female art student. It’s a book about money and power in the wrong hands. Miss Brooker has trapped men in her Perspex, with real butterfly wings and red finger nails grating down the trapped men, sounding like finger nails on a blackboard.

The artist refuses to marry because she would rather “collect’men, to try them and to learn from them rather than buy them and look after them. She believes marriage is a trap set up by the patriarchy and institutioned by women.

The Art Work was sold to Max Watters with a custom built tall plinth, with a perspex top that a light shone through to highlight the features & flaws in this highly evolved polished, perspex sculture. To pour the resin the artist stayed awake for 72 hours and the photography and inlays took considerable more thought and time.

Before it was sold to Max Watter’s the Roslyn Oxley Gallery, Sydney had expressed interest in the piece. The slender plinth emphasing the sleekness of the sculpture like a Brancusi bird. It is slick & gloss with electricity. The flaws in the work is reminiscent of Duchamp’s large glass where chance and accident plays a part in life and art.