I call it the golem. I don't know if it is a golem. It's also kind of a cyclops. It's a one-eyed creature. He's both powerful and frightening, but it's also absurd.
My name is Thomas Houseago. I'm mainly a sculptor, but I work in a number of mediums. I paint, I draw, I make photographs. The Giant Figure--slash golem slash cyclops--from 2011 in bronze. In the case of this piece, I made first the legs. I made an armature out of iron that I attached to a wood base, and then I added the clay on top as to make the legs, to make the feet. You'll notice I used the base to stand up on the piece and be able to work on some of the higher points around the hips. I even made a pile of clay to stand on, so I could get access.
They were all made in clay. They were cast. They clay goes and turns into plaster in a sense through this process. When I was happy with it, you have a sculpture made of plaster, and wood, and iron, and then I shipped it to a foundry where that whole process--where that whole thought process, and that whole activity--was then cast into bronze. So, the piece you see in front of you is a bronze. It's almost like a print of the work. There's a great sculptural phrase which is, "Clay is life. Plaster is death. Bronze is rebirth." In a sense, bronze is rebirth. It's this very, very strong, very impermeable form that carries within it all of these actions, and all of these processes, and you can still see it.
My work was often used as, "Oh, it's very macho. It's powerful," as if I was somehow wanting that, and I actually wasn't. When you really look at the work, it's fraught with cracks, it's fraught with problems. My work is filled with mistakes, and frailty, and desperate solutions.
The scale is out. It's strange. It's disquieting. It's disturbing. The back and the front constantly move between the idea of me trying to make you believe that the piece is a figure, and revealing that it's just a pile of clay. There's something I found at the time fascinating about the urging of the viewer to be reminded of that, that art really is that simple.