Bowed Catalogue essay by Andrew Gaynor, 2025 For two decades, James Parrett has been exploring the sculptural possibilities of circles and arcs. There are echoes of the industrial ethos of Hard Edge abstraction from the 1950s and 1960s, but unlike that manifesto-driven and short-lived movement, Parrett sees his work as possessing a natural and long-standing evolution over time, with no radical departures reflecting the whims of fashion or the market. This resolute, formalist approach is akin to that of revered Australian artist Clarice Beckett who was once asked why she focussed on her own neighbourhood and never travelled overseas. She responded: ‘I have only just got the hang of painting Beaumaris after all these years, why should I go somewhere else strange to paint?’[1] It is the same with Parrett; he still finds a rich vein of source material and inspiration within the circular form. Allied to this, he is an avid skateboard rider who built his own skate bowl within his studio, observing that before each move a skater must first calculate the line or angle. These variable arcs further inform his pieces as does his other passion, surfing. ‘I’m not just mimicking the waves in my sculptures,’ he says. ‘Rather, I’m responding the power of the wave, how it has a peaceful energy at the start and then it turns into this explosive energy that nobody can control. It can go anywhere it wants to go and do anything it wants to do. And it’s the contrast between those two energies I want my work to have, often quite peaceful but they sometimes explode.’[2]
These combinations underpin Parrett’s oeuvre with two key examples being the Rabaul and Montevideo Maru memorial, 2012, commissioned by the Australian War Memorial, Canberra; and M-Forty-six, which won the Aqualand Award at Sculpture by the Sea, Sydney, in 2018.
Parrett’s preferred use of anonymity in his titles (currently running from M-One, 2006, to M-Sixtythree, 2025) allows the viewer greater range in their own response to his pieces. This does not mean that they cannot be emotionally affected by his sculptures, but their interpretive freedom is not forced, directed or criticised by the artist. The exhibition Bowed at Flinders Lane Gallery is full of Parrett’s masterly responses to the challenges of circular geometry and the materials he employs. Parrett admits to being fascinated by the light and dark of stainless steel and its ability to reflect its surroundings, but he also employs richly coloured lacquer on pieces such as the red, wall-mounted M-Fiftyone or the automotive blue of the cantilevered M-Fiftyfive. Increasingly, his recent work experiments with tonality and/or contrast as seen in the burnished ends of M-Sixty or the elegant blue inserts within the stainless steel M-Sixtyone, constructed from arcs of mathematically related diameter. James Parrett’s Bowed is an exhibition full of technical mastery and visual fascination, one which also exudes an optimism that is increasingly rare in an otherwise didactic world of contemporary art.
[1] Clarice Beckett, c.1928. Quoted in: Hollinrake, R, Clarice Beckett: the artist and her circle, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1979, p.21
[2] James Parrett, 2018. See: ‘Aqualand interview series – James Parrett’, Sculpture by the Sea (online), https://sculpturebythesea.com/aqualand-artist-interview-series-james-parrett/ Accessed 28.01.25
