Norma Redpath

Norma Redpath Caroline Colbran

Dr. Jane Eckett, ‘Man sights an object in space: Norma Redpath’s approach to public art’, Art Monthly , May 2013, p. 63.

69 , Commonwealth Film Unit, 1969, 28 mins. Norma Redpath, ‘Notes on Approach to 6. Commissioned Sculpture’, unpublished manuscript, artist’s papers, 1969, cited in Dr. Jane Eckett in ‘Progression in space: works from the Norma Redpath studio’, Charles Nodrum Gallery website, https://www.charlesnodrumgallery.com.au/exhibitions/norma-redpath/essay-by-jane-eckett/.

Norma Redpath, quoted in Gordon Thomson, Norma Redpath: An overall study of the work of Norma Redpath and in particular the years 1969–1970 , Rudy Komon Gallery, Sydney, p. 2. Ibid., p. 18. 2. Ibid., p. 2. 3. Ibid., p. 35. 4. Norma Redpath’s sculptural practice is profoundly concerned with the phenomenological experience of the embodied subject encountering sculpture in situ. The very foundation of her practice, her formal language of fragments, ‘are dedicated to and related to, the stature and psyche of man in relation to his environment, who consciously and subconsciously identifies himself with form and form fragments of past experience, who constantly strives to adjust and identify his needs with the psyche of his era, with his shelter and the surrounding space’.1

From the mid-1960s, Redpath became increasingly interested in architectural forms, such as arches, buttresses, columns, and portals. Drawing from both the natural environment and classical architecture, her sculptural language evolved through the re-evaluation of these archetypal forms— breaking them down into ‘form fragments’ to be resynthesised, further fractured, and reunited again into structures insinuating, or in some cases directly referencing, universally recognisable natural and man-made phenomena.2 Desert Arch 1964 can be seen as a confluence of these two major influences. Fragments are welded into a roughly delineated archway, with sweeping bronze slabs and emergent broad horizontal shelves, symbolising the arid expanse of the Australian desert.

Redpath rejected the idea of sculpture being self-contained.3 Rather, her works engage negative space and integrate with the surrounding landscape, and are concerned with the experience of the viewer and their relationship with site and sculpture—‘man sights an object in space for visual equilibrium and physical balance to help him establish his identity in scale with his surroundings’.4 In Desert Arch the relationship between site, sculpture and viewer is accentuated by the presence of a ‘viewing slot and narrow chink’ through which the viewer can see but not move.5 The consideration of movement through space is apparent from Redpath’s early work in carved wood and first bronzetti, including Horizontal Movement 1962, through to the 1980s and diminutive clay propositions such as Flying Colonnade, Captive Sun Span (maquette) 1985. Through fragmentation and reformulation, Redpath often interrupts the implied trajectory of the arch, unsettling the accepted archetype as it exists in the collective unconscious of viewers, leaving them to understand the continuing momentum of the arch, through the negative space beyond the bronze. Such works indicate ‘an invisible but nevertheless ‘felt’ progression in space, an extension from an inner core, beyond the physical dimensions of the sculpture’.6

Redpath’s interest in architectural form was well established in her sculptural practice ahead of her public commissions of the 1960s and 1970s, and her integrationist approach to public sculpture seems only natural.7 Paesaggio Cariatide (Landscape Caryatide) 1980–85, commissioned for the foyer of the State Bank Centre in Melbourne, was Redpath’s final commission. This monumental structure references two seemingly disparate elements from the history of architecture: the classical caryatide of Ancient Greece and Rome, symbol of Apollonian beauty and order, and the flying buttress of the European Gothic Era in Europe, ornate and romantic. The title translates roughly as ‘carrying the landscape’: Paesaggio Cariatide integrates into the landscape, extending upwards and outwards supporting the weight of the sky above the earth in a show of epic strength.

Norma Redpath, quoted in Sculpture 8. Australia 69 , Commonwealth Film Unit, 1969, 28 mins. Ibid. 9. After a decade of being based alternately in Milan and Melbourne, Redpath returned to establish a studio in Carlton. Her works during this later period, such as Gate of the Black Plumes 1985 and Flag Gate 1985, demonstrate her enduring interest in classical architectural forms, while also indicating a return to the carved wood works of her early career. Redpath’s sculptural forms often consist of two disparate elements in dialogue which contribute to the elegant balance of the overall structure, for instance in Gate of the Suspended Sun 1985 a single wooden sphere is suspended between two columns. Redpath worked with the motif of the sun from the time of her first bronzes and well into the 1980s, bringing a robust and ‘physical presence’ to the form, as seen in Sun Image: Night Sun 1985 and Sun Image: First Noon (maquette) c. 1985.8 Whether through their monumentality, or their conceptual underpinning, there is at the core of Redpath’s sculptures, a nobility that works to engage the ‘epic qualities’ of man and landscape alike.9

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Norma Redpath Gate of the Suspended Sun 1985

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Norma Redpath Horizontal movement 1962