2009 MATT CALVERT: SHADOWS AND DOUBTS
EXHIBITION IMAGES
Unlike mending broken china, Matt Calvert’s work is not simply a case of
putting the pieces back together again in order, hoping that the cracks won’t
show. Instead, its a fragmentation that frustrates order and alludes to more
devastating unforseen events such as the initial impact of a car accident or
violent explosion, atomising form. The artist’s painstaking reconfiguration is
not a construction akin to jigsaw puzzles or Lego; it’s more precarious and
desperate than that - these surrogate components aren’t designed for
reconstruction. They don’t return to their starting point but are transformed
into an image shaped through longing. The poignancy in these works lies in
Calvert’s forcing into place a concretion of fragments heartbreakingly lost to
one another – a process of reconciliation that’s essentially flawed from the
moment it begins.
Philip Watkins, arts writer and curator,2007
Tasmanian-based Matt Calvert, received a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) from
the University of Tasmania in 1993 then was awarded a Samstag Scholarship
which he used to attend Goldsmiths College at the University of London in
1994. That same year, Calvert took up a residency at the McCulloch Studio at
the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. In 2007 he was announced as winner
of the Wyndham City Council Acquisitive Award.
This year he was again a finalist in the Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award (he was also a finalistin 2007) and for the second year in a row, Calvert was a finalist in the 2008
Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize. Calvert has been awarded residencies and
commissions all over the world, including Australia, Malaysia, Japan and the
United Kingdom and his work is held in major collections within Australia and
abroad. He recently completed a major commission work for East Link Toll Way
in Melbourne.
Calvert’s evocative sculptures and wall panels of children, animals, toys
and flowers, offer a reflection on innocence, fragility, childhood and memory.
He reinvigorates discarded materials such as glass, metal and plastic by
meticulously shaping