Skip to content

Artwork Details:

  • TypeSculpture
  • Year2008
  • Medium18ct gold
  • Dimensions88h x 65w x 50d cm
More about this artwork:

This sculpture deals with the idealised unreal image of the idolised body. It depicts the fashion model Kate Moss who became a media icon for our age. Presented in contorted yoga poses, the work explores the idea of Moss as an abstraction, an idealised figure who is more of a cultural hallucination than an actual person of flesh and blood. It is cast in solid 18 carat gold. Quinn says of the work, "Human beings often create images, begin to worship them and then forget the images were initially invented by them. They are left with an abstract image that is impossible to measure up to. This is the basis of all celebrity and religious imagery. Gold is a metal that humans have decided is one of the most valuable materials in the world, but like their invented images of perfection, gold itself is a belief system - inherently no more valuable than any other metal.” By casting this work in gold, Quinn creates an image of all the impossible dreams that lure people to wreck their lives on the rocky shore of reality - the ultimate hallucination which drives humans to madness." When this sculpture was shown in the British Museum in 2008 alongside its classical antecedents, it also coincided with the beginning of the global financial crisis, thus further emphasising the fragility of all these belief systems.

Back to top