ANOTHER HEIR
Ceremonial Bowl (Curtin University)
Western Australian She-Oak (waist high)
Artist in Residence project
This work sits within a Ceremonial Bowl category in Lueckenhausens work. This category works within the narrative of containing, of being an agent for presentation and making a votive offering. Larger manifestations of this category have found their way into similar installations, both domestic and commercial as the formal welcoming icon on an office reception area or in the entrance hallway of a home. These works can be placed anywhere and at their most prosaic they could contain fruit, eggs or some collection of decorative objects. At their most poetic they manifest as domestic reliquaries.
The narrative is that of the (albeit) domestic object with long-term provenance rather than of the ephemeral, as with most contemporary domestic objects with a use by date.
The Jacaranda seedpod, the lip-like opening of which evolved through a continual series of mutations into one of Lueckenhausens key signature marks is often seen as a visual resolution point and where the works take on a zoomorphic presence, as the mouth of the creature. The flared sides of the pod led to a series of works with flared edges and eventually, as the works crossed from flora to fauna references, into wings and related elements that have developed into a sort of mythological iconography.