Cathy McClure
Hands wielding scissors, McClure massacres the motor-driven robotic plush toys, eviscerating them through a Geppetto-like taxidermy until she gets down, as she says, “into the guts of the piece”. Skinning the ‘bots to the bone, all that remains are their various articulated plastic limbs and bodily armature, which contains the preserved mechanisms that gave these once-cuddly kitties and elephants and doggies and roosters delightfully life-like movement and sound.
Disassembling the carcasses and then re-casting the limbs and armatures in the most archetypical fine art medium, bronze, McClure’s Frankensteinian re-assembly of the new ‘parts’ involves craft-like re-fittings and manipulations as well as re-installation of the original circuit-boards, batteries, gears, and voice-boxes.
The reincarnations? Through metamorphosis, they seem to have aged, even wizened. Their now-hollow voices and awkward, geriatric movements – the result of their evolved, hardened and precious new bronze armatures - remove them from the toy chest where they were raised and catapult them into the adult environments of salon, library, museum. Now, part historical / figural sculpture, part archaeological artefact, they become each a Trojan Horse, the cavity filled with a Pandora’s Box of memories. -Murray Moss
Disassembling the carcasses and then re-casting the limbs and armatures in the most archetypical fine art medium, bronze, McClure’s Frankensteinian re-assembly of the new ‘parts’ involves craft-like re-fittings and manipulations as well as re-installation of the original circuit-boards, batteries, gears, and voice-boxes.
The reincarnations? Through metamorphosis, they seem to have aged, even wizened. Their now-hollow voices and awkward, geriatric movements – the result of their evolved, hardened and precious new bronze armatures - remove them from the toy chest where they were raised and catapult them into the adult environments of salon, library, museum. Now, part historical / figural sculpture, part archaeological artefact, they become each a Trojan Horse, the cavity filled with a Pandora’s Box of memories. -Murray Moss
