A GOOSE with huge feet; wrapped round the base of its neck, which
hangs sadly down, is a wind instrument, on which a crescent moon is
resting. A leaf, standing on its edge, a cushion of sorts, over which
droops a flaccid penny whistle, on which is perched a bird, erect throat
reaching for the sky in song. A dead bird lying on a fish, beneath a
knife and boomerang. A different bird, with a lyre bird-like tail, a
closed fan that becomes a violin, with a body carried by human, dancers'
legs.
Another crescent moon, ending in a cat's head, so that moon slides
imperceptibly into neck, neck into moon, as the eye travels up or down.
An egg, hatching a foot, on which a bird sits. A goose wrapped round in
rope, its neck forced through a hand mirror. A Dream Bird, upside down,
its head landing on a cushion, with leaves for its legs.
James Castle's beautifully crafted bronzes, painted wood carvings, and
works in painted plaster create a world of marvels beautifully poised
between the two extremes of fairy stories. Neither horrific nor merely
charming, with a lightness of touch that evades neither the depths and
shadows of myth nor the contemporary psychoanalytical knowledge which we
bring to it, these sculptures, like the best rococo mythologies, are at
once entranced and knowing.
This is perhaps most clear in one of the series of mixed media
drawings, some studies for or variations on sculptures, others, like Boy
on Pig, self- contained contributions to the modernist menagerie. Do You
Like Worms? shows a bird-man offering a worm in his beak to a naked
woman with a heart between her breasts. When sexual symbolism is so
transparent, so unrepressed, it becomes less insistent, a natural part
of a complex world of metaphor and metamorphosis, of the innocence of
dreams.
Until November 28.
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