AGNSW collection Rodney Glick, Made Leno, Wayan Darmadi, Dewa Tirtayasa, Christopher Hill Everyone no 83 2009
https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/124.2012.a-p/
Is there a painting more delightful in the Gallery’s collection than the one to your left of Radha and Krishna clad in lotus petals?
The divine couple are found as lovers often are, stealing a moment of serene intimacy in a garden of earthly delights. Yet their loving gaze and earthly rapture also speaks of bhakti, the mystical doctrine in which devotees seek unity with god through impassioned devotion.
Do the lotus-clad lovers in Rodney Glick’s sculpture share this spiritual devotion?
Glick, an Australian sculptor who lives
in Bali, often works with the intricate imagery of the Hindu religious tradition. He found the inspiration for this sculpture
in a popular Art Gallery of New South Wales exhibition from 2006 called Goddess, which featured a small painting of Radha and Krishna very much like the one in the Gallery's collection.
Glick’s figures, however, differ from their historical models in crucial ways. She, Radha, wears a striped cotton top beneath her suit of petals, while he, Krishna, wears sneakers and a fashionably cropped beard.
Says Glick, 'I personally see Everyone no 83 as a very intimate, face-to-face embrace of two people. I don’t relate it to a bigger picture but as with all art many people may see this relationship as symbolic of a greater universal vision'.
