Melanie Fitzmaurice

Modified explorers’ equipment forms the basis for Melanie Fitzmaurice’s most recent body of work. In her sculptures, the fundamental, practical qualities of objects are altered to offer a new function. Inspired by her recent travel to Hospitalfield House in the coastal town of Arbroath, Scotland, (late 2009), Fitzmaurice’s latest body of work explores themes of distance and trajectories, orientation and disorientation, and pairs the practical with the marvelous.

These sculptures take the form of absurd reconfigurations of objects, which are familiar and, ordinarily, easily understood. It is by intervening with these everyday objects that Fitzmaurice is able to redirect their connotations to convey more complex meanings.

Here, the face of a compass emerges from a pillow, a chandelier suspends from the claws of a grappling hook and a backpack sprouts a rope ladder that unravels behind its wearer. Drawing on binaries, Fitzmaurice creates sculptures, where opposites are able to co-exist. Her work is inspired by paradoxes in life, particularly where emotions are concerned. Here, contradictory elements converge. Her sculptures are covered with a consistently grey, tracksuit fleece skin, which is both unifying and denaturing. United through surface, they are isolated and removed from the colour and pace of everyday life and the outside world, creating their own immersive environment.

In this body of work, Fitzmaurice makes use of the comforting characteristics of the tracksuit, an item of leisurewear often limited to the domestic domain. Sleeves and cuffs appear throughout her sculptures, offering the casual qualities of a hooded jumper or a pair of tracksuit pants, which contrast with the utilitarian exploring equipment.

Fitzmaurice’s creations are unusual and the objects involved are dysfunctional and nonsensical. Once tools for exploring, climbing or traveling, these surreal and intriguing reinventions of the familiar, now serve as emotional-rescue gear, drawing connections between geographical and emotional journeys.

All enquiries welcome: Tel: (03) 9417 2828 Email: enquiries@catherineasquithgallery.com.