Bowl of Fruit
Bowl of Fruit
1995
Bronze
20 × 25 × 36 cm
Edition of 6
Cast by Ken Cook
Bowl of Fruit belongs to the group of still life sculptures I began making in the 1990s, when fruit, flowers, vessels, fish and other familiar objects became a way of exploring the long history of still life through sculpture.
Although the work begins with recognisable objects, I was never interested in simply reproducing them. Each element was modelled individually and the surfaces were worked, altered and patterned before casting. Colour was equally important. The extraordinary coloured bronze patinas were developed with the caster Ken Cook, whose understanding of bronze allowed me to treat colour as an integral part of the sculpture rather than as a decorative finish.
The composition draws upon a tradition stretching from Dutch still life painting through Chardin and Cézanne, but its objects have become fully three dimensional. Grapes, pears and other fruit are brought together with folded and modelled forms so that the still life becomes something that occupies real space and can be walked around.
John McDonald discussed this period of my work in the catalogue for my 1996 exhibition at Christine Abrahams Gallery in Melbourne. He described the sculptures as drawing upon an unusually wide range of visual sources, including Dutch still life, Bosch, Chardin, Cézanne, Bonnard and Picasso, as well as ancient and medieval objects encountered in museum collections.
For me these sources were never templates. They were points of departure. The objects were modelled from scratch and changed continually through the process of making, allowing recognisable forms to become increasingly ambiguous, physical and sculptural.
Bowl of Fruit was later included in Ken Cook: Out of the Workshop at Pangolin London in 2022, an exhibition celebrating the work of the distinguished bronze caster with whom I worked extensively during this period.
Bowl of Fruit was exhibited at Orion Sculpture Park and Gardens, the sculpture park I established outside Yass in rural New South Wales. My bronzes were installed throughout the landscape, with individual works becoming focal points within specially designed garden rooms rather than being shown in a conventional white gallery space.
The park brought sculpture into direct relationship with planting, water, changing seasons and the wider Australian landscape. Still lifes, figures, animals and flower sculptures made over the preceding two decades were shown throughout the grounds.
Bowl of Fruit was exhibited in Elysium Verto: Paradise is Changing in Los Angeles in 2018.
Its inclusion brought the sculpture back into an international exhibition context more than twenty years after it was made. A work rooted in the still life tradition and developed during my Australian period was shown again alongside later work, demonstrating the continuity of subjects and ideas that have remained important to me across several decades.
Exhibition history
1996
Christine Abrahams Gallery, Melbourne
1996
Robin Gibson Galleries, Sydney
Still-life Group exhibition
2010
Orion Sculpture Park and Gardens, Yass, New South Wales, Australia
2018
Elysium Verto: Paradise is Changing, Los Angeles, California, USA
2022
Ken Cook: Out of the Workshop, Pangolin London
Literature
John McDonald, “Stephanie Burns: Recent Sculpture,” catalogue essay, Christine Abrahams Gallery, Melbourne, 1996.
Stephanie Burns (McDonald), exhibition catalogue, Christine Abrahams Gallery, Melbourne, 21 September–17 October 1996.
Ken Cook: Out of the Workshop, Pangolin London, 2022.
Provenance and records
Bronze edition of six.
Cast by Ken Cook.
An example numbered 1/6 was recorded at auction by Leonard Joel, Melbourne, in 2015.