Abstract:
Ricky Swallow (b. 1974, San Remo, Australia) transforms everyday materials and objects into meticulously arranged compositions, suggesting a unique approach in creating sculptures as a process of object translation. Contemplating themes of life, death and everything in-between, Swallow’s practice addresses the relationship between the state of an object and various processes that influence its transformation.

Swallow’s current body of work is a bricolage of recurring forms of everyday objects, which he casts in bronze. The familiar, yet uncanny groupings of ropes, chairs, and hooks possess an austere discipline and invisible tension within its composition that memorializes the transience of movement. Balanced with a Surrealist wit, Swallow’s works are on the cusp of climax, arrested in space—forever destined to be in a state of potentials, anticipations, and [‘what if’s]. Swallow creates this unambiguous perspective in order to acknowledge and emphasize a before and after of the sculpture’s current state, directing viewers to face these objects for what they are, have been and could be.