Matthew Bourne

This artwork shows a powerful torso, cut at the neck and widely opened at the back. The form flares like a corolla and sits in tension between two readings: a very real body, mass of the chest, tightened waist, and the idea of a “costume”, almost a kind of armour. The fragmentation isn’t theatrical; it mainly shifts attention to what allows the body to hold, breath and contained energy.

Kintsugi is central. A fracture runs through the piece and extends into a broad gold area at the base: the repair becomes a line of force, structure, light. The gold doesn’t hide the accident; it makes it visible and gives it a role. The sculpture reads as an object tested and then reinforced.

The work evokes what comes after the gesture: effort, rupture, recovery. Dance appears here less as virtuosity than as endurance, a body that holds because it accepts its own scars.