Vicky McAlpine

Between comfort and unease

Growing up surrounded by my father’s eccentric collections, from voodoo dolls to eighteenth-century farm implements, shaped my understanding of the potency of objects. Their histories, associations and mysteries continue to inform my practice. I transform familiar forms—the human figure, a door, a ladder, a gatepost—to create ambiguous narratives in which the boundaries between the real and imagined become uncertain.

 

My work is often situated within gardens, woodlands and rural landscapes. Drawing upon folklore, myth and fairy tale, I consider nature as both sanctuary and threat. Forests recur as places of enchantment and disorientation, where familiar objects become strange and different possibilities emerge.

Copper is fundamental to this language. Soft yet enduring, it records the marks of making, touch and time. Hammered over bark or cast into figurative forms, its surface continues to change through handling and weathering. Its contradictions, strength and fragility, permanence and change, mirror those within the work itself.

 

Touch completes all my work. Warmed by the hand and altered through repeated handling, copper accumulates traces of those who live with it. Whether a figure held in the hand or an unexpected object encountered in a wood, my sculptures occupy the space between comfort and unease, familiarity and strangeness. My practice considers our need for connection—to one another, to place and to memory—and the capacity of objects to offer solace and orientation within an uncertain world.

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One of the most persistent of needs is the search for solace. These copper figures were made as companions, “orienting” objects for the turbulent times that we live in. They are a celebration of the magic imbued in copper and the liveliness and connectivity of copper. They are depictions of life as I see it, precarious, fragile, full of beauty and brutality, laughter and sadness.