Linda Marrinon has worked across painting, watercolour, and sculpture since the 1980s. She combines her long-term interests in feminism and art history with a playful – and sometimes wicked – sense of humour to recreate traditional art genre formats like landscape painting and neo-classical figurative sculpture. Caricature has long been a trademark of her practice, and though her works often retain faithful aspects of their originals, they are simplified or exaggerated in a way that deflates any sense of awe implicit to the original.
The artist’s fascination with stylistic tropes and art historical movements has continued in recent decades through a sculptural practice examining social archetypes of the past. These cast plaster figures draw on the history of European sculpture and the nineteenth century tradition of producing studio copies of classical sculpture for research and exhibition purposes. In a nod to the Impressionism movement, the artist’s hand and style is clearly visible in each work. Historical studies of posture and dress, each figure also offers poignant observations into the social affectations and vulnerability of the human condition.
Visit 21 x 10 at Arts West, Level 2.
