Plaster Casts

This ongoing project, begun in early 2017, was a reaction to the resurgent popularity of marble as a contemporary sculptural material. Plaster casting helped the marvels of antiquity gain accessibility through comparably cheap replicas of marble originals, and this series likewise began by reproducing, and re-imagining, contemporary marble sculptures using plasterboard.

The first piece was a reaction to a work by Kaspar Bosmans, itself inspired by Paul Thek. Bosmans’ work is a small, boxy sculpture made of mitred marble slabs with six eggs projecting from the top surface, and a drawing of a fox on the side. Its playfully irreverent recreation in pink plasterboard (with projecting cucumbers) negated any intrinsic material value, becoming a new and unique sculptural object.

As the project has progressed, newer plasterboard works such as Plinth for no one have started to look at objects in other materials, questioning how their aesthetics, function or relevance can be affected by their recreation in a material that lends an unusual combination of fragility and permanence. At once vulnerable and brittle, plasterboard also aligns itself with notions of support and rigidity – as so many modern buildings will attest, it is not a temporary material, but an integral facet of long-term construction.