Culture

While Dunedin's art scene may attract less attention than our famous music scene, promising young graduates from the Dunedin School of Art have the potential to reverse the “underground” nature of Dunedin art. One such artist is sculptress Sacha Lauchlan, the inaugural winner of the Feldspar Award, an initiative formed to help new artists transition from study into practice.
Sacha Lauchlan focuses on figurative sculpture, especially the female nude. She finds herself drawn to figurative sculpture as “there is a lot to be learnt in trying to replicate what your eyes see.” While wary of placing Lauchlan in a “type”, it is obvious that she is working within the hallowed tradition of Renaissance sculptors. However, displaying an awareness of being perceived as simply a “stale” reworking, she instead views this tradition as a history that she has to make relevant today, saying “my work revolves around creating fluid relationships between the artist and the audience.” Lauchlan is conscious of the importance of the audience, the viewer, to her work and accommodates them accordingly.

 
Her most prominent, large-scale work to date was exhibited at Site10, the graduating exhibition of the School of Art, and was called Living Sacrifice. A life-size sculpture of resin and bone dust, the work is a nude self-portrait of the artist holding her head à la David and Goliath. This work explores many broad and diverse themes. At one end of the spectrum is an exploration of the objectification of women and censorship in the arts, an inheritance of questions raised by 1970s feminism. Here, one senses dedication to and respect for the female form, a determination to engage with these questions from a female point of view. At the other end of the spectrum is a nod to Western Christian heritage. While subtly incorporating traditional sculptural techniques, for example the use of contrapposto, Lauchlan is not afraid to blur the boundaries, for example substituting Goliath's head with her own. This refers to how the believer must live their life like Christ, as a living sacrifice. The double self-portrait is also a reference to Jewish animal sacrifice where the head is a place for the transfer. Biblically the head is also a place for the reception of blessing, for example Isaac blessing Esau and Jacob. There is also the reverse: the head as the place to curse, a removal of blessing.
 

Lauchlan also explores the duality between Christ as our (male) redeemer and the body of the believer (male or female). Lauchlan says, “The relationship between Christ’s body and the body of the believer is explored. Furthermore, I have engaged with the concept of Christ’s body as an interface or site for relation between God and humanity. Christ’s body is seen as the place where God and man meet and are reconciled.” Historically, art and religion have overlapped to an enormous degree. This is demonstrated by her second important work, Triptych. Also displayed at Site10, it was a polished entry at the latest exhibition at the Dowling Street Project. The work consists of three large photographic images transferred onto doors. The subject matter is based on Christ's descent from the cross, but what we see is a nude female arranged as if coming down from an invisible cross. Rather than being controversial, it is an intelligent, thoughtful work, encompassing the idea of the Church body, and again linking to ideas of sacrifice.
 

Sacha Lauchlan's work is an intelligent mixture of the reflective and participatory, more of which shall be exciting to see throughout the year.