Linda Marrinon
Linda Marrinon | Australia b.1959 | Dancer 2005 | Tinted plaster | Purchased 2006. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant | Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | © The artist
The Hand, the Eye & the Heart | 1 October 2011 — 12 February 2012 | GOMA | Free admission
Linda Marrinon works in the European tradition of figurative sculpture and references in her work the tradition of the sculpture room with its plaster casts. Marrinon’s complete sympathy with the conventional repertoire of stances, seen in this tradition of European art academies, is crucial: it is as if the viewer is ‘hard-wired’ to respond to the postures of these figures – some with exaggerated contraposto, and some more straightforwardly based in rococo versions of classical prototypes.
Marrinon’s work also refers to the nuances of working with plaster as a traditional material. Some of her figures seem to have marks on their roughly textured surfaces that recall investment marks left on a bronze after casting by the lost-wax method. Others seem to mimic the plaster casts for a bronze concealed within. Marrinon is clearly working between finish and non-finish, riding the boundary between artistic conventions.
