MÉMOIRE D’UN DANSEUR

Guy Detot

1 February - 30 March 2025
Cathleen Edkins Gallery

Guy Detot has been carving in wood since he first had a pocket knife as a child, and he hasn’t stopped since. In Mémoire d’un danseur, Detot speaks to his rich background as a ballet dancer in both Europe and Australia to make a suite of extraordinary pieces that both commemorate and celebrate famous dance duets he has performed.

Working out of his studio in Penola on the Limestone Coast, Detot’s sculptural process begins with foraging or being gifted majestic hunks of red gum, purple mulga or black wattle. With the slabs of raw wood dotted around his studio, he then waits for each gnarled chunk to reveal its figurative potential before carving them into life.

In Mémoire d’un danseur, Detot awakens – in wood – his own back catalogue as a dancer. Whether it’s performing in Pina Bauch’s Rite of Spring or Christopher Bruce’s Ghost Dance, the sculptures feel their way through those dances again, locking ephemeral moments and movements in time to share both personal and universal qualities of the human condition.

Image: Guy Detot, High Flyer. Photo Mark Dutney.