Orpheo

Orpheo
1993

Signed: Stephanie McDonald

Bronze Edition VI

Height: 74 × 54 × 27 cm

Cast: Ken Cook

Orpheo is a bronze portrait of my cousin, Peter Fuller, sculpted when he was twenty-one. While making the work I was reading The Odyssey, and the portrait gradually evolved beyond a straightforward likeness into a figure shaped by classical mythology. The title references Orpheus, the legendary poet and musician whose journey between the worlds of the living and the dead has resonated through Western art and literature for centuries.

The sculpture was cast in two editions by the renowned bronze founder Ken Cook, each with a distinct patina, emphasising how colour can subtly transform the character of a bronze while preserving the same sculptural form. Over many years Ken cast many of my bronzes, and his mastery of patination became an integral part of the finished works.

Orpheo was exhibited at the Delaney Galleries, Coventry Gallery and Christine Abrahams Gallery during the 1990s, before one edition was later installed at Orion Sculpture Park and Gardens near Yass, where it became part of the permanent collection displayed within the landscape. These exhibitions chart the early development of my sculptural practice across Australia.

While reading The Odyssey, the portrait gradually evolved into Orpheo, drawing on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Rather than illustrating the story directly, I wanted to capture the instant Orpheus turns for his final glance at Eurydice. Writing for my Coventry Gallery exhibition in 1994, David Matthews described the sculpture as having “intense physical life”, with “the muscles tautening as the head turns round for the fatal glance back at Eurydice.”

David Matthews also concludes:

“Stephanie McDonald has developed a rich symbolic language for her sculpture… Artists who work within a tradition have access to a complexity of reference that is denied to those who deliberately reject the past.”

© Stephanie Fuller (Burns)