Girl with pony tail

This essay originally appeared in New Zealand Art at Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2018).

It was only after his brother-in-law Alan Ingham returned to Christchurch in 1953 that Russell Clark took to sculpture with enthusiasm and purpose. Ingham had been a studio assistant to Henry Moore in England, a position that gave him close access to the master’s working processes and ideas. He brought back with him several of his own small sculptures and heads influenced by Moore, some carved in stone, and these were a catalyst for Clark, who had already developed a passion for Moore’s work.

Girl with pony tail is carved from a piece of New Zealand marble that Clark found near Mount Somers in North Canterbury. Previously stone carving in New Zealand had largely been done in smooth-grained material like imported Carrara marble or Oamaru stone, a local soft limestone. Clark saw the potential for using a highly veined local marble to give a modernist textural quality and colour to his work. Inspired by the approach of Moore and Ingham, he explored the possibilities of carving his work so that there was a play between the forms of head and hair and the space between them that becomes part of the work. By resting his carving directly on the base, without the customary neck and shoulders of a bust, he gave it a fresher, contemporary feel, in keeping with its subject.
Rather than being somewhat remote from everyday life, like a public statue on a plinth, it has a domestic theme and scale. It is small enough to be placed on a table top in a suburban home. It can be handled and moved around at will, bringing it closer to life. The head has a modernist simplification of forms, but its conception remains naturalistic. The incised lines contrast with the polished surface, adding a drawn component to the piece.

From this starting point Clark went on to make a series of table-top sculptures, many of Māori subjects. He was one of the first New Zealand sculptors to make works that were accessible, affordable and able to be displayed in the average home. By doing so he broke down some of the barriers to appreciation of sculpture and made it more widely understood.

Michael Dunn