Grotto

Coiling, teetering, and at times oozing, Nabilah Nordin’s abstract sculptures are sensorial delights. Intuitive and materially-led, Nordin is an artist who embraces non-traditional materials – from bird netting and balloons to bread – and embarks on a process of ‘unlearning’ to forge her own playful and unique sculptural language.

Grotto is the central work from Nordin’s installation Corinthian clump, which responds to the architecture of the vestibule in the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ South Building. As acknowledged in the title, the series combines references to the sleek, ornate columns of Corinthian order architecture, with the notion of a formless ‘clump’ of materials, thrown together haphazardly. Nordin’s resulting ‘clumps’ are spectacular sculptural forms that appear almost animative, seducing the viewer with wit and intrigue. Grotto is an abstract white and blue form that coils into the air around zig-zagging timber beams. Embedded within this towering mass are small pyrite crystals and pearlescent bolts – unexpected treasures to be found by those who come close. Although inert, Nordin’s sculpture have a life and dynamism of their own.

Of the series from which this work derives, Nordin says:

In response to the Ionic classical architecture and symmetry of the Art Gallery’s vestibule, I started to look at Corinthian columns – a more decorative, ornate design with acanthus leaves and vegetation spilling out from the capital. There is something excessive and monstrous about this act of spilling. I wanted to take this gesture and accentuate it by embracing uncontrollable spillages, overabundance, and over-decoration. The growth at the top of the column is an indication that there is something living inside a column. That the column is a container and inside the container there is energy, activity, life within.

The way I construct sculpture starts with a single vertical line going up. From this line other forms grow out organically in the same direction or opposing directions. The forms take on their own life – they unfurl or multiply, always speaking to excess.

I embrace support structures, spillages, fragility, imbalance – everything classical sculpture does not. I wanted to use a variety of materials that have their own constraints so that the unexpected could happen.