1996 The Rotating Rhythms of the Twentieth Century

In the 1990s the female torso was used by Dibble in a variety of artworks, an essential emblem of European and art from antiquities. Dibble’s nude, if looked at carefully, functions almost as a caricature. For although at first glance it looks to be a full form with mass, from the side the shape becomes wafer thin, a semi-relief method of modelling more akin to carving practised in the Pacific in the making of canoe prows and on the carving of the panelling of the meeting house. The figure thus embodies the issue of two cultures and their presence in Aotearoa.

The nude in this work, is based on the famous surrealist painting by De Chirico. The figure twists, reflected in the movement of the top as it turns, the other part of the diptych a mechanical element that we couldn’t expect to share such gesture. The spinning top contrasts as a form that is truly in-the-round and also in its sense of movement next to an essentially static figure. As a pair the artwork ponders the approach of the new millennium, only a few years away from the date of construction, a suggestion of moving on, without certainty of progression, and of history becoming a part of a rich new culture.