Dale Dunning: Old and New

Dunning’s fascination with the inner workings of the self has spanned more than fifty years, providing a continuous thread throughout his artistic practice.
Beginning in the 1970s, he explored the human mask as a vehicle for examining identity and consciousness, producing more than sixty variations on a generic, life-size form. This investigation evolved into three-dimensional heads, first enlarged to the classical heroic scale of 1.25 times life size, then to three times life size, as seen in some of the works in this exhibition and finally to a monumental scale, 10 times life size for outdoor installations.
Despite these changes in scale, the head retains its anonymous, gender-neutral form.
Dunning further explores the mask’s expressive potential through varied processes and materials. He manipulates wax models before casting them in bronze or aluminium, or fabricates the forms from cut-out elements of aluminium plate. Each approach allows the form to shift and evolve, revealing new possibilities for exploration.