Sculptor Barbara Franc’s work – which shows at the Union Gallery on Broughton Street this month – embodies a paradox.
At one level, she has an uncanny ability to model complete, living and moving beings: wonderful hares and prancing horses, birds of all shapes and sizes, mischievous squirrels, stags chewing, swans, stately and serene.
At another level, she manages to reduce these creations into their component inorganic parts.
The observer’s brain zooms in and out, torn between the delights of detail and overall form. One struggles to make sense of something which is both compellingly real and inescapably artificial.
One can’t help studying the intriguing minutiae of composition, its decorations and details taken out of context, reshaped, reassembled, oddly familiar and yet strange.
Before one’s eyes there unfolds a micro world of: steel and copper wire, recycled tin, zip fastenings, keys, bicycle brakes, bike spanners, nutcrackers, typewriter keys, watch straps, car wiper blades, coaster wheels, jewellery, dog clips and chains, the buckle from a puppy collar and other found objects.
Nails, fabric, lace, wood and plaster.
Cutlery, cable guard, keys, spectacle frames, Totopoly figures found at a car boot sale along with a postillion horse and rider.
Umbrella spokes, corsetry wire, Bluebird typewriter, emergency rations tin.
The effect is disconcerting, amusing, sometimes awe-inspiring. Most of all, though, it fascinates ...
Barbara Franc’s solo exhibition Menagerie continues at the Union Gallery, 45 Broughton Street, until 25 November. AM