The very first major body of visual work by Australian rock star Nick Cave – various ceramic art figurines – will be brought to Brussels in the spring of 2024.
The singer is not (yet) expected to grace fans in Belgium with his music anytime soon, however he will be showcasing one of his other talents next year.
Cave's variety of artistic endeavours is well known. Not only is he the frontman of the famous rock band 'Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds', but he is also an author, composer, multi-instrumentalist, writer, poet, and scriptwriter. In recent years, he has also turned his hand to ceramic art.
The result of this new pursuit is The Devil - A Life, a series of 17 glazed ceramic figurines, which were created between 2020 and 2022 in the style of Victorian Staffordshire flatback figurines, and are meant to depict the devil's cradle-to-grave story.
Cave's work titled "The Devil Bleeds to Death". Credit: Galerie Xavier Hufkens
Cave depicts this creature, often regarded as the fearsome Antichrist, as an everyman who experiences life in a very human way. The works aim to showcase that people are conflicted and that there is good and bad in everyone.
"What started as a desire to create a single small devil figure as a vehicle for an intense red glaze became a journey towards some kind of absolution from a series of shattering events," Cave said of this deeply personal series.
"This [the ceramic works] — and in fact, all the songs that I write — are about the idea of forgiveness, the idea that there is a moral virtue in beauty. It’s a kind of balancing of our sins."
These works of art will be brought to the Belgian capital by renowned art dealer Xavier Hufkens, who has three galleries in Brussels. The works will be on display from 5 April to 11 May 2024 at Hufkens' gallery located on Rue Saint-Georges in Ixelles.
The collection was previously shown in the exhibition "We" at the Sara Hildén Art Museum in Finland (2022-23), together with work by Thomas Houseago and actor Brad Pitt.
