Tom Puckey

"The nudity in my work is the area where I allow two types of obsession with the female nude to overlap with each other. The 'classical' obsession and the cultural obsession which surfaced in the 1960s and which has grown and grown ever since then. The one where the taboo is disguised and allowed by 'responsible' artistic tradition, and the other where the taboo is pushed against and aside by 'irresponsible', incorrect commercial and sexual interests. I play directly into these two types of approaches to the nude, I temper the obscenity of the one with the obscenity of the other. I let posed 19th century-like formalities bring a kind of order to 20th and 21st century violent indecency. The presence of modern weapons in the sculptures makes them seem contemporary in a cheap kind of way, this I realise. I like this suggestion of cheapness, I play into it. Chicks and guns. At the same time I let the matter overlap with the threatened, threatening, violent female figure of history and myth, from the Papin sisters, through to Diana, Lucretia, Judith and so on. I take great care with the details in the weapons, they need to be as accurate as possible within the carving process. The portrayal of weapons in war monuments has influenced me greatly, and there remains of course an adolescent-like fascination with these things which I rhyme with Klossowski's analysis of the nude in art, involving in his view a similar type of fascination ('The Decadence of the Nude')."

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