Assembly

Embedded in all of us is the ability to recognise and read the human figure from scant visual information. In the monumental work Burke sought to depict a collective human presence with a series of defined spaces.

The material and forms draw on the artist's early involvement with engineering practice and an appreciation of the aesthetic properties of functional engineering construction. Each figure is comprised of three out of a possible four assembled mould sections of a body cast. This allows the viewer visual entry into each form and an opportunity to perceive it from the outside in, as if casting ones own body.

Assembly acknowledges that there is a tension between the reading of an image of the human form and the affect that the physicality of materials and process have on that understanding. The work was conceived as an assembly of persons, of parts, and spaces, which can finally be assembled by the viewer.