Maura Zukina

Maura will be exhibiting several sculptures in her series The Hopeless Task of Preserving Life.

“In her body of work The Hopeless Task of Preserving Life Maura Zukina takes inspiration from the cycle of growth and decay on her allotment where she finds many metaphors relating to her therapeutic practice and the universal challenges of life many of us face. She uses decomposing organic matter to create a series of ceramic and metal sculptures. Casting something she has grown becomes a moment frozen in time, changing an organic living vegetable to a rigid effigy. In transforming them in this way she elevates the mundane and captures them in a moment of growth or decay.” Maura Zukina, 2018.

For me Zukina’s work is reminiscent of the ‘banquet piece’ in Dutch Still Life. The idea is that the painter would study a recently vacated table and paint bitten apples, cut cheese and bread, glasses half full of wine. This scenario was false and the banquet scenes would have been carefully curated by the painter. Zukina explores the ephermerality of nature and human interaction by casting it during a moment of transition; these organic objects are elevated (as she writes) to the grandeur of the banquet table by her casting process.