The humility of plaster

Roithmayr, F. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-5425-3358 (2018) The humility of plaster. [Show/Exhibition]

Abstract/Summary

Staged as a series of interventions amongst the Museum’s collection of plaster casts of Greek and Roman sculpture, Florian Roithmayr’s work explores the inheritances of mould-making and cast-collecting in an installation of newly-commissioned sculptures, on show for the first time in the Museum of Classical Archaeology’s cast gallery. Roithmayr’s work takes inspiration not only from the widespread application of casting processes beyond the artistic canon, but also from the moulds which make up the very fabric of cast production themselves: “When I started to explore all the different collections across Europe, housing the plaster moulds that have been used for centuries to make cast copies, I was drawn to the very sculptural character both these moulds displayed themselves but also the vast storage collections housing them. They were sculptures in their own right, stacked, piled, accumulated, arranged, forgotten, re-discovered. It is almost as if these places, the activities and the materials collected there are sculpturally far more interesting than the objects they bring forth.”