Michael Bullock, Duo, 2009. Mixed Woods. 200 x 50cm x 20cm.
Photography by John Brash.
Michael Bullock, Chuyển Thể, Installation View, 2009. Mixed Woods. 200 x 50cm x 20cm.
Photography by John Brash.
Michael Bullock, Threshold, 2009. Acrylic Wall Drawing. 2m x 8m.
Photography by John Brash.
Michael Bullock, Study for a Future Evolution, 2009. Alpha Gypsum. 60cm x 15cm x 60cm.
Michael Bullock, Study for a Future Evolution, 2009. Alpha Gypsum. 60cm x 15cm x 60cm.
Michael Bullock, Chuyển Thể, Installation View, 2009. Mixed Woods. 200 x 50cm x 20cm.
Photography by John Brash.
Michael Bullock, Chuyển Thể, Installation View, 2009. Mixed Woods. 200 x 50cm x 20cm.
Photography by John Brash.
Michael Bullock, Analogic Desktop, 2009, Polyurethane, Plaster. 120cm x 60cm x 85 cm.
Photography by John Brash.
Michael Bullock, Analogic Desktop, 2009, Polyurethane, Plaster. 120cm x 60cm x 85 cm.
Photography by John Brash.
Michael Bullock, To Blow a Bubble That Falls to the Ground, 2009, Bronze, 53cm x 28cm x 40 cm.
Photography by John Brash.
Chuyển Thể has been a word that I seek to understand, it exists in a language, Vietnamese, that is quite different to my mother tongue of English. It is a language that I wrestle with, but remains elusive. The ambition of forming meaning across languages is the skill of the speaker, translator and listener. It involves a dynamic movement across culture, history, time and space; back and, forth. It is in this uncertainty and instability of an untranslatable word or phrase that a practice in sculpture can empathise, imagining signs, material and forms that are yet to be made, translated and seen.
Chuyển Thể declares the manifold meanings of ‘change’ and ‘transformation’ and its application to a specific language of sculpture in materials and making. I am encountering, attempting, knowing and speaking sculpture, thumbing through the dirty dog-eared pages of the dictionary, the encyclopedia and the manual to pronunciate a ludic and purposive vocabulary that attempts some fluency.
I will combine this with the overlapping strands of definition that shape ideas of form and forming through the systems of different beliefs that have shaped civilisation and culture. Religion, science, modernism and their various shooting branches have both guided and relied on the visualisation and materialisation of different forms. We now have the advantage of assessing these relics of images and objects as both sculpture and art. We can deconstruct the structure and syntax of these beliefs to reveal the scaffolding and schemata that hold a form together and then transform as artists can.
Abstract Taken from MFA Exegesis, Chuyển Thể; Transformation in Sculpture, MFA Exhibition, Monash University, MADA, 2009.