Rodney Glick
Project team: Made Lena, Claire Evans, Chris Hill Sohan Ariel Hayes
Everyone No.9
2006-08
Carved and painted wood
750mm x 400mm sq
Photo: Tony Nathan
How is it that Rodney Glick, a contemporary Australian artist, came to be working with Made Leno, a traditional woodcarver from a small village in Bali. It is a longish story, but when Rodney heard that I spoke Indonesian and had been researching Balinese art and culture for some years, he suggested that together we should be able to find a woodcarver who could carve some large portrait sculptures. Rodney had been working on a series of digitally manipulated photographic portraits in collaboration with photographer and film maker Sohan Ariel Hayes. Some of these works, which are also entitled Everyone, and also included in God Favoured, were the source material for the carver. We enlisted the help of my close friend Nyoman Suweta and together we visited several carving studios before deciding on Leno from the village of Kemenuh. Nyoman was also to act as project manager, overseeing the work in our absence and helping with the complex logistical issues involved with such large works.
Most Balinese woodcarvers learn their skills from an established carver, often a family member or neighbour, under an informal apprenticeship system. Their training does not normally equip them to produce a likeness, and for Rodneys work it was essential that the sculptures were accurate, lifelike representations. Leno learnt to carve at an early age from his father, but he had also been to art school and studied life drawing, and he was confident about having the technical skills to produce lifelike works of various different scales. Apart from being confident of his ability, he seemed surprisingly unfazed at the prospect of carving a bigger than life size statue of Rodney with three heads and four arms. As is normal in Bali, negotiations regarding price were protracted but friendly and eventually a price was fixed and work started. At this stage, after a week in Bali and having found a suitable carver, I thought that my work would be over. Eighteen months later, after six more visits to Bali and having embarked on a further four projects, I realise how naive I was.
Chris Hill, 2008