West orbis
Robert HAGUE
New Zealand/ Australia born 1967,
arrived Australia 1985
West orbis 2009
Bronze, stainless steel
New Zealand-born Robert Hague is a Melbourne based sculptor and printmaker whose work ranges from lyrical abstraction, as here, to highly realistic imagery including human forms as well as inanimate objects such as hand tools. As a sculptor, Hague works in stainless steel, bronze and marble. In his Orbis series of sculptures, he creates dynamic and sinuous compositions that call to mind, notionally at least, the swirling skirts of Loie Fuller, the famous ‘serpentine dancer’ who performed in the 1890s at the Folies Bergère in Paris.
It has also been said that the curvilinear compositions of the Orbis sculptures allude to the distinctive patterns of traditional Maori carvings known to Hague from his youth in New Zealand’s Rotorua. Another interpretation of the imagery suggests that the gestural sweep of this and related sculptures conjures up the trajectory, or orbit, of a celestial object.