Rose Gibbs
b. 1979
Mountain was Rose Gibb’s graduation piece for her degree show at the Royal College of Art in 2010. The work is a satirical sculpture that pokes fun at gender stereotypes. She says:
“Bronze is used to celebrate and commemorate historical events, I have used these associations to comic affect. The mountain is a metaphor for the epic, populated by women in various states of pregnancy, vomiting, pissing and lactating in absurd quantities, my art plays on the notion that women are tied to their biological functions.”
The landscape in which these women find themselves is male, tree trunks have become penises, symbols of virility, but defunct, limp in this instance. The knob ends are polished, a play on words and a reference to revered religious icons, rubbed smoothed by years of people touching them for a blessing.
Mountain was cast in bronze by Gibbs at the Royal College of Art foundry in 89 separate pieces which she then welded together. Pangolin Editions sponsored the bronze element and assisted in the finishing of the work.
