Lead landscape

Michelle Nikou’s work displays a fascination with the material properties of everyday objects. Taking humble, inconsequential items, she subverts them, changing their materiality by casting them in lead and other heavy metals. At first glance, Lead landscape appears to be a simple domestic scene – a kitchen table with various cooking items, such as baking moulds and kitchenware. But, because these domestic items are made of cast lead and rocks, a more sinister interpretation can be applied to the work: these materials are not only physically weighty, but the known toxicity of lead, especially when ingested, suggests an inherent danger in this innocuous scene. The artist invites us to engage with the kitchen table in a broader feminist context and to examine the history of female domestic life and the ways in which this domesticity has contained and controlled the autonomy of women.

Adelaide-based Nikou is a graduate of the University of South Australia, with a major in ceramics, and since the mid-1990s has exhibited extensively around Australia. With her unrefined and handmade aesthetic, Nikou continues to push the boundaries of sculpture by taking real, everyday objects and transforming them into the surreal.

Tansy Curtin, Curator, International Art pre-1980