Positioned on a plain wooden plinth, Otto & Max is a beguiling duo from Renee So’s series of sculptural busts. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Australia, the artist was inspired by the collection of German Bellarmine stoneware beer jugs that she stumbled across in the Victoria and Albert Museum after moving to London in 2005. These distinctive vessels, which were first imported to Britain in the 1500s, were carved in the image of bearded woodsmen, and deliberately riddled with cracks so as to resemble archaeological relics. Combining elements of these objects with influences drawn from Greco-Roman sculpture, mid-century pottery, military portraits and her readings of art and anthropological history, So created a ‘tribe’ of characters, resembling artefacts from an imaginary time and place. Executed in 2008, Otto & Max takes its place within the artist’s first group of ‘named’ sculptures, predating the anonymous specimens that would dominate her output from 2010 onwards. ‘I viewed them all as individuals with their own unique characteristics’, she explains. ‘… The reason for this was to maintain a sense of mystery and ambiguity in terms of their origin and historical period.’
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