Manta Ray

James Angus is one of Australia’s most accomplished contemporary artists, highly regarded for his imaginative sculptures that blur the distinction between fiction and reality. Angus is skilled and knowledgeable in traditional and contemporary sculpting techniques, from modelling with clay to using computer programs to design and execute sculptures that appear to be physically implausible.

Angus’ sculptures usually find their subject in forms that already exist in the world. His works can be divided into two main spheres – natural creatures, and human-made forms that are often architectural or manufactured. Living things will be emphasised for their sculptural nature, while inanimate objects propose various propositions about physics, gravity and geometry.

In Manta Ray, the undulating curves of this monumental creature appear eerily still and perfectly hydrodynamic. The artist chose this animal as his subject for its ability to represent an ambivalence – a manta ray is familiar yet obscure, graceful yet haunting, gentle yet intimidating. For Angus, it also offered an interesting study in what he calls ‘suspended animation’. He developed the work with an industrial designer, software programs and computer numerically controlled (CNC) machinery, to craft a piece of impressive stature that appears weightless. The sculpture’s perfectly sinuous lines mimic the oscillating movements of a swimming ray, but also recall the aerodynamic designs of human-made vehicles.

Angus has said of this work:

I wanted to capture an aspect of natural history in a state of suspended animation. I was hoping it might be beautiful, but also sad, as if the software I’d used had inadvertently caused its demise. It would be simultaneously alive and deathly. Of course, sculpture has always contended with this problem. As much as I wanted to reiterate the very objecthood and kinaesthesia that sculpture tends to engage in one way or another, I also wanted to cast a shadow of doubt across the current tide of digital effects and media.