Nap
(1986)

• Bruce ARMSTRONG

Sculptor Bruce Armstrong was fascinated by ancient monuments, creation mythologies and animistic beliefs that all creatures and objects have a soul. He loved to reference, as he did here, French Romanesque sculpture from the eleventh century and British medieval funerary monuments. A cat lover, Armstrong always had them prowling around his home and studio. He loved historical depictions of cats in art, such as the celebrated Sleeping Cat (Nemuri-neko), a polychrome wood carving attributed to the seventeenth-century master Hidari Jingorō that adorns the Tōshō-gū Shrine in Nikkō, Japan. Around the time that he created Nap, Armstrong had a dream that he was asleep in a bed, guarded by a cat at each of the four corners of his mattress, an image that he soon realised using red gum.