September 2022
’Belinda Fox & Neville French: Fall'
Arthouse Gallery, Sydney Contemporary

While Belinda Fox and I were in conversation about this essay, she emailed me the following quote from an interview with British artist Phyllida Barlow, with the postscript, ‘I wish I had said that!’:

“I’ve often spoken of the simile being a kind of curse; a desperate need to find a rationale for what we’re looking at. To be abandoned with something that’s only like itself, and refutes definition, is an extraordinary experience. Sculpture can really challenge one in that respect. When the idea is lost, something unknown starts to develop, and this relationship between maker and object is incredibly powerful – it’s as if the work is fighting back. The object that doesn’t yield is a touchstone, giving another dimension to the toughness of life. So, ideas, or thoughts, happen during the process of production, rather than being concrete at the outset and resolved through the making.”

For me, this says a lot about Fox as an artist. Read