Rodney Glick

The Everyone Series

16 March - 9 April 2011

Rodney Glick 2011

‘...then again when you hit the exhibit that reaches you, chances are you’ll be floored by it. The exquisitely detailed icons by Rodney Glick are an example of this, reaching back millennia into Hindu mythology, yet carrying the dreadful weight of modern consumerism. They immediately spoke to me of the tension between the traditional and the new. How the culture of cool is the religion of the new generations. How Eastern mysticism will probably end up dominant over the current
schizophrenic and fractious global tenure of a Western democracy with its separated Christian heritage. I would attempt to describe these statues, but imagery such as this cannot be captured in words, even a photo would be unjust. I can only insist that my readers catch the ferry out to the Island and walk five minutes to the top of the hill to see these
simple elegant figures for their own.’
- Sydney Biennale Review, www.5thwall.wordpress.com

Rodney Glick is an artist who for over two and half decades has been creating ambitious, diverse, and wry projects of a monumental scale. Glick’s practice spans sculpture to photography, video, installation and architecture – using intelligence and a wicked sense of humour to comment on both the real and spiritual realms.

With these latest sculptures from his ongoing Everyone Series, Rodney Glick presents us with a strange and intriguing cultural mix. The works are loosely based on Indian Hindu paintings from the 18th and 19th centuries. Glick has staged certain scenarios depicted in these paintings. These scenarios have then been photographed and digitally altered. These composite images also serve as the blueprint for the Balinese artisans who have worked with Glick in carving and painting these sculptures.

There is a strangeness about these works, and certainly an element of humour, that comes from the surprising juxtaposition of ancient Hindu subject matter with contemporary models but these are not mere parodies. Rather, by mixing cultures, by combining religious and secular, and by referencing art from a different age and culture, universality is implied.

A bespectacled western man straddles a bull with golden horns in Everyone no. 35. Clad in jeans and a collared shirt, his chain store v-neck jumper pulls snugly accentuating his middle-aged paunch. Eight arms fan out proudly from the man’s torso wielding on one side a series of bloodied swords and on the other a clutch of miniature nude male figures. In Glick’s offbeat world the man on the bull is both Mr Average and Hindu god-like vanquisher – capable of slaying unsavoury characters en route to his day job – he is everybody – all of the time.

In Everyone no. 83 two lovers clad in lotus petals sit in yogic poses experiencing the divine euphoria of love –so intense is their passionthat the lotus has engulfed them like a protective – or concealing layer.

Everyone no. 137 embodies a leather – clad vixen wielding a variety of symbolic objects in her multiple arms – an impaled head (perhaps a cheating lover) a clutch of limp helpless miniaturised humans. The paradoxical nature of this figure is compelling – she is at once vixen and villain – we simultaneously fear and desire her. The ‘realness’ of Glick’s subjects attests to the possibilities of acting out deep impulses over a repression learned through social conditioning – as illustrated
in Bret Easton Ellis’ novel and film American Psycho, or the cult HBO TV series Dexter - where the seemingly ‘everyday’ person is capable of gruesome and flamboyant acts of violence. With his ‘everyday’ characters Glick is suggesting that while humans are capable of sensitivity they are also capable of experiencing sublime and god-like senses of vengeance, courage and love.

These sculptures from the Everyone series, seduce us through the fineness of their form and the skill of their making; they intrigue us because of the mix of ancient and modern, religious and secular, Eastern and Western; and finally invite us to confront deep and basic states of mind that we all experience but that we might prefer to leave concealed.
Extracts from catalogue essays by Chris Hill (Rodney Glick, Punching the Devil) and John Barrett Lennard (Rodney Glick Surveyed).

For a complete list of works please contact the This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.