Richard Stringer
Richard Stringer is a Melbourne based artist working across the fields of sculpture, painting and film. He has held thirteen solo exhibitions in Australia and has participated in exhibitions within Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, co-curated exhibitions at Gertrude Contemporary, Conical and Sculpture Square. He has received research funding from The Australia Council, Arts Victoria and The City of Melbourne, and has taken up residencies in Italy, New Zealand, Burkina Faso and Germany. His work is represented in the N.GV. and private collections in N.Z, Europe and North America. In 2017 he received first prize in the Deakin University Contemporary Small Sculpture Award. His public works include Monument for a Public Building at the St Kilda Town Hall and Queen Bee at Eureka Tower in Melbourne.
Richard is currently on leave from a PhD at Monash University investigating the role of sculptures within cinema within the field of Media Archaeology. He received an Australian Postgraduate Award for this research.
He also works in Australia as a field archaeologist and since 2012 is a senior member of the Alampra Archaeological Mission in Cyprus.
The two works in the collection are separated by three years and are linked by theme. The Birth of Zarathustra (pop rivered tin,1990) sets out a dilemma where as Monument for a Public Building (bronze,1993) goes on to depict its consequences.
These works attempt to locate the question, ‘why are things as they are?’
Birth of Zarathustra
Zarathustra is in some ways a simple ideogram. It is an imaginary depiction of the Iranian prophets ideology that divides the world in two. The floating figures each speak to the created opposites of good/evil, black/white, male/female, night/day, motion/stasis, dead/ alive.The character is now a divided self.
This dualistic worldview is fundamentally linked with the transition to urban life represented by brick built architecture. His head is tattooed with constructions, ziggurats, suburban houses and the Shot Tower in Melbourne.
Chamber of the Dead Queen
The Dead Queen is housed within a mausoleum structure designed by Nonda Katsalidis to contextualise the work of Richard Stringer together with the Dogs of Hell sculpture by Heather B Swann. The Dogs of Hell stand at the entrance to the chamber of the Dead Queen and the observer needs to navigate their way past this aggressive guardian sculpture into the serene chamber where the Dead Queen is to be found.
The original Queen Bee sculpture was made in 2004. Through the instigation of Nonda Katsalidis this work was later reimagined on a large scale for Eureka Tower in 2008.
This reinterpretation of the original works represents a departure from the original idea that explores city life as a colony through the metaphor of the complex social order created by bees.
The large bronze sculpture, patinated in black, communicates a sense of pathos and the ultimate tragedy that death represents. The mausoleum is set amongst gum trees and is surrounded by concrete and steel walls that create a sense of containment and a feeling of gravitas in the setting of the Australian bush.
Richard’s beautiful rendering of the body of the Queen, meticulously crafted, is respectfully placed on the altar, which can also be seen as a crypt or ossuary. The iconography of the base is reminiscent of Italian fascist architecture and the multiple arched fenestration elements could conceivably be chambers containing other funerary remains.
Many societies have by degrees adopted the bee as an ‘ideal’ for social organisation. This symbol is compelling as its beauty conjures order and productivity yet the ‘top down’ social model has issues for the individuals living within it. The work is therefore cautionary regarding its sustainability as a human political system.
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