Small Sculpture Fair
The special occasion of McClelland’s Small Sculpture Fair gives an opportunity to enjoy a wide variety of works by many artists created in a diverse range of materials and styles, all disciplined by scale. The smallness of the scale invites the viewer closer to the work and in many ways intensifies the viewing experience. In addition to being attuned to this personal environment, the work often reveals a lot about the artist’s creative process. Just as drawings for a painter are often characterized as ‘thinking out loud’, the diminutive scale of small sculptures also allows the artist to experiment with new ideas and evolve new inventive solutions to complex three-dimensional problems, free of the logistics and demands of monumental public scale works.
Each sculpture captures the essence of the artist’s creative process. As small sculptures they are precious gems to be prized as the first realization of the idea or the product of the effective distillation of the creative process. Some works in the Small Sculpture Fair have been created as maquettes with the potential to be realized in the larger scale of public art, yet as small works they have the added virtue of collectability for the private collection.
Playing with scale is important. The international renowned artist Ron Mueck, the creator of McClelland’s Wild man 2005, always works in over-life-size or diminutive scale to eliminate direct comparison with reality, and thereby gives his works unique authority and power to engage with the viewer. Picasso once observed that sculpture is about making reality and with the change of scale there is the creation of a new reality. This is the magic of small scale sculpture.
The Small Sculpture Fair exhibition, following a preview in Melbourne at Deutscher and Hackett, will be held in the McClelland grounds in January 2013 as part of the annual McClelland Garden Party. The Small Sculpture Fair is a superb complement to the McClelland Sculpture Survey. Together these two exhibitions illustrate the great variety of contemporary sculptural practice from the micro to the macro, from the intimate small-scale works in the Fair to the monumental scaled works in the McClelland Sculpture Survey which are displayed along a sculpture trail within the bush setting of the grounds.
The Small Sculpture Fair is a new fund-raising initiative for McClelland, with the various Dealer Galleries who represent the participating artists generously donating their sales percentage to McClelland, while maintaining the normal sales percentage for the artists. I would like to sincerely thank all the participating Galleries and artists for their generous support of the Small Sculpture Fair and to acknowledge especially the commitment and outstanding effort of the organizing committee: Josephine Baillieu, Sarah Bernard, Susie Hamson, Lyn Johnson, Louise Myer, Betsy Pie and Paul Sumner. We also express our warmest appreciation to Deutscher and Hackett and Mossgreen Gallery.
I encourage you to support both the participating artists and McClelland through the acquisition of these superb works.
Robert Lindsay
Director, McClelland Sculpture Park+Gallery
Titania Henderson
Titania Henderson was born in 1945 in Holland, arrived in Australia 1956. In 2002 she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) and went on to complete her Honours in ceramics in 2004 at RMIT, Melbourne. Henderson has held two solo exhibitions at Christine Abrahams Gallery, Melbourne (2007) and at Karen Woodbury Gallery, Melbourne (2010) as well as participating in numerous significant group exhibitions internationally and throughout Australia.
Among her various awards and achievements, Titania has received a Highly Commended, Tattersall’s Contemporary Art Prize, Melbourne (2005); finalist at the 54th Concorso Internazionale Della Ceramica d’Art, Museum of International Ceramics, Faenza, Italy (2005); Winner of the Smorgon Steel Contemporary Art Prize Open Award Melbourne (2004) and finalist in the Siemens RMIT Fine Arts Scholarship, Siemens, Melbourne (2004).
Her work is held in numerous private and public collections including the National Gallery of Victoria; Museo Internazionale Della Ceramiche In Faenza, Italy and Taipei County Yingge Ceramics Museum, Taiwan.
TITANIA HENDERSON 