Sensitive Mythical Creatures / Online Magazine

Sensitive Mythical Creatures

Animal sculpture by Susan O’Byrne. Wire, clay, glaze.

Many of the animal sculptures created by Susan O’Byrne stand upright on two legs, just like the protagonists in fairy stories. Yet they seem to be far from confident and self-assured because this Scottish ceramic artist wants her creations to look “awkward, sensitive and vulnerable”. Her oeuvre has been inspired by images from the animal world that have fueled people’s imagination since time immemorial. In myths and sagas, animals serve to simplify the complexity of the “real world”. O’Byrne finds models for her creations in Medieval bestiaries and Victorian menageries. The shape of her sculptures is determined, like that of real animals, by a skeleton. Formed from wire, this framework serves her as a basis on which she applies layers of printed and patterned porcelain clay so as to form a skin. As a result of the clay’s shrinking during the firing process, the wire frame’s twists and curves become visible and therefore are part of the finished sculpture’s appearance.

“Fox, Cheetah, Gazelle
and Other Animals”
December 11, 2011 – January 29, 2012
Marianne Heller Gallery
Friedrich-Ebert-Anlage 2
69117 Heidelberg, Germany
www.galerie-heller.de