Sculptures Speak to the Grotesque and the Sensual

During fieldwork, Peg carries sculpting wax and acrylic blocks in a daypack — usually flesh coloured or black. It is as if her hands tell stories her imagination deflects.  She forms small maquettes that are rendered larger in her home studio. Realities heard, seen, smelled and felt determine whether sculptures are cast in bronze, pounded in metal, carved in stone, or rendered in black clay for double firing.

Overall, sculptural themes are about the nonsensical justification of human cruelty against our own species, eco-scapes and cultures.  Peg is moved to sculpt the taboo.

This gallery sample spans 20-years of global fieldwork, including Nepal [Maoist coup of Nepal (1996-2006) where Peg attended the torture centre outside Kathmandu]; Cambodia where she did an 8-year film ethnography of the unending fallout from crimes against humanity and genocide under the Lon Non and Pol Pot regime; Laos PDR (art project with child landmine victims — unending debilitating aftermath by USA  numbered UXOs from the 60s-70s where millions remain scattered to this day; refugees seeking asylum in Japan (conversations with those from Iran, Afghanistan, Africa and elsewhere who will likely be deported; Aboriginal youth in detention in Australia and the suspicious deaths in custody; and Holocaust first-person accounts of horror. More recently, Peg has engaged in biweekly FaceTime calls with a Palestinian physician whose senses are saturated in the ‘repulsive’ — a sculpture is underway that will be cast in bronze.