Mosaic artist Deborah Halpern is now at one with her people. When she stands next to Person wearing Nepalese hat they both demonstrate a liking for loud colour schemes and black stripes.
She is putting more of herself into the work these days and “the more complicated, the more there is to it,” Halpern recently told Australian Arts Review.
Fans travelled from all over Melbourne to see her exhibition at Niagara Galleries in July.
Angel, her large gestural figure outside the National Gallery of Victoria, is seen as a prophetic piece for young female artists trying to create their own visions.
Talk to Halpern though, and like most artists, it’s all about the process and she’s happy to share some of her discoveries.
The shapes for her figures, which range from humans to dolphins, to Bogong moths, are made out of fibreglass and steel, than black lines are drawn on them to represent the figures. These black lines are then replicated in tiles.
“Black is the strength,” Halpern says, bringing up images of other artists that have influenced her, such as Dubuffet, Picasso and the exuberant pieces of Niki de Saint Phalle. “Black outlines are so strong because they define the elements.”
Each section of the sculpture is then filled in with tiles. Halpern employs young apprentices who are learning the skill of mosaic. To define a figure “takes time and thought and concentration,” she said.
Halpern’s next challenge will be to design an installation for the 2025 Art Basel in Hong Kong. She will have a room to fill with her figures and will also be designing the way they are encountered.
“It could be a maze or a walk-through,” she says. “The room has dark walls. Some figures might be on a turntable.”
Halpern’s better-known figures are large and gestural with symbolic names such as Orphelia and Angel who tower over important public sites.
In her recent exhibition she went small and intimate, creating figures with limpid eyes and modest expressions of fashion.
It has been quite a journey for the mosaic artist, from her pioneering work in the ‘90s, to her acceptance today as a major sculptor with international commissions and price tags of $250,000 for her major pieces.
“I was grateful to be given the chance,” says Halpern, who recently repaired Orphelia, after it was moved to its current prime position on Southbank Promenade.
When she first created the large organic, mosaic-tiled form in 1992, she said she was reacting to all of the metal sculptures in vogue. At the time Orphelia seemed cute and popular and, somehow, lightweight but now it appears prescient.
It was Halpern’s alternative vision that probably got her the gig as the zeitgeist began moving in a more personal, popular culture kind of direction.
Deborah’s work was recently on display at Niagara Galleries in the exhibition, Defiantly Joyful. For more information, visit: www.deborahhalpern.com for details.
Image: Deborah Halpern with Person wearing Nepalese hat (2024) – photo by Rhonda Dredge
Words: Rhonda Dredge