Janus Head

After many years of using moulds conventionally as negatives to be filled with materials, Burke became interested in the moulds themselves. There is a curious relationship between the outside and inside of a mould; in their contained space they have a specific, dematerialised ghost form, and yet the outside, which is generalised in form, is more specific in its materiality. When confronted with a mould of the human form the viewer has an immediate association with it, a curiosity about the nature of the space we occupy and a predisposition to read the negative as a positive. In the monumental work the artist was interested in the possibility of being able to physically enter this space and the kind of feelings that that might engender.

Two identical casts have been placed together to be able to view both outside and inside at the same time, which began an association with the idea of the Roman God Janus, the god of beginnings and endings.