Treated Skulls
Alas
Plaster, earth and chalk
15 x 13 x 20 cm
1998
Humument Skull
paper collage on plaster
15 x 13 x 20 cm
1996
Trophy Skull
bronze
15 x 13 x 20 cm
1996
image courtesy of Flowers Gallery
The Trials of Love
paper collage and mud on plaster
15 x 13 x 20 cm
1996
Dreams
paper collage on plaster
15 x 13 x 20 cm
1997
Palermo, Palazzo Butera, Francesca and Massimo Valsecchi collection, photo by Marco Cassina
No object has had a longer history in the art of the world than the human skull. The treated or decorated skull appears in the art of Oceania and Africa and most gloriously in the sky-coloured turquoise-covered crania of Pre-Columbian America.
It is now quite difficult to acquire a skull other than one's own. The particular example on which these works are based was bought from an ethnographic dealer and is a fetish skull from the Southern Seas.
All were adaptations of a cast of this, worked on and re-cast in bronze or glass (via wax) or directly 'treated' in collage or other techniques of application. Collage elements include the ever-serviceable repertoire of A Human Document, The Boys Own Paper, colour supplements of newspapers or, more recently, prostitutes' advertising cards.
Drawing to a Conclusion (1997), p. 6.