Lee Salomone
Lee Salomone trained in photography before gravitating to sculpture. His process-based, somewhat hybrid practice encompasses works on paper, found objects and hand-crafted bronze. He uses both lived experience and observation to create narratives, or “contemporary artefacts”.
Image credit: Lee Salomone, Passages (detail), 2024, mdf, bronze, 90 x 240 x 5 cm. Photo: Sam Roberts. Courtesy Adelaide Contemporary Experimental
Salomone’s childhood was framed against the background of the post-World War II Italian diaspora community in Australia. These migrants had brought with them European traditions of land cultivation, an understanding of seasonal living, community interdependence, frugality and the pervasive influence of the Catholic Church. Both his parents emigrated from the southern province of Benevento in the Campania region.
“I was born Leandro Salomone, the eldest of four children, in an Anglo-Saxon country on unceded land. My art practice has always addressed both the contemporary world around me and my cultural heritage; Italian peasant rituals and traditions have provided a life-long source of inspiration,” Salomone reveals. “I understood Arte Povera even before art school as my paternal grandparents, adults who mended and created by using what was at hand, raised me. This appropriation of everyday fragments has stayed with me.”
Found and reclaimed objects form an important aspect of Salomone’s work, often providing a resonance and austere simplicity within his compositions. “We were raised in a religious family and I seem to have inherited the found object calling. They fling themselves at me, landing between my feet or gently tapping me on the shoulder. Even in faraway continents, they speak in dialects that I understand. Their requests are always identical – insisting on being transformed. A random and individual path opens up when you listen to these requests. The materials speak and I listen, ... Subscribe to read this article in full
