The multifarious output of Melbourne-based artist Claire Lambe is the culmination of unpacking, revising, re‑imagining and making.

By Dan Rule APR 2015

An elegant wooden sculpture props lightly in the middle of Claire Lambe’s airy studio, perched on the second level of Melbourne’s Gertrude Contemporary. Meticulously carved from jelutong, the work’s long, slender limbs twist and arc outward like branches, their curves at once sensual, science-fictional and organic.

We both circle it, observe it from different vantages. It is an odd and graceful object – its formal centrepiece a love heart – akin to some kind of beautifully, awkwardly mutant cousin of Art Nouveau. Lambe has strung together a second iteration of the sculpture, titled Another beautiful useless object (2014), with tangles of wire. It sits abjectly, but somehow tastefully, on the floor nearby.

There’s a sudden guffaw, Lambe flinging a hand up to mask her laughter. “It’s like a dirty little secret,” she whispers in her soft, distinctly British accent. “I’m working with Art Nouveau. I hate Art Nouveau! I’ve always hated Art Nouveau!”

There’s more laughter. “Perhaps it’s my reactionary nature that’s driving it – this idea of trying to find something in an object or idea or genre that I find repulsive, and work through it…bring ideas into the studio that I feel uncomfortable with and try and unpack them.”

Today’s conversation plays out in a kind of frenetic, animated form. We wander from one corner of the studio to the other, inspect sculptures and models and source materials. There are zigzagging explanations, digressions and reassessments. There’s talk of family, of a life lived in different continents during ... Subscribe to read this article in full