Nabilah Nordin
For Singaporean-Australian sculptor Nabilah Nordin, a regular week in the studio might involve pouring resin on baguettes, encasing a sculpture in deflated balloons and melting kilos of beeswax. “I have 12 different artworks on the go at the moment,” the 31-year-old says of her process. “I'm creatively fuelled when I learn new processes, and when the work does something that, to me, is unexplainable.”
From contorted shapes sprouting tufts of silky white hair to epoxy-clad armatures, Nordin's work is ambitious yet playful, and no material is too unconventional. “I don't believe in material hierarchies. Construction materials like timber, metal, concrete and adhesives are just as appealing to me as wax, bread, wigs, walnuts and feathers,” says the artist. “Whatever the material may be, I am always intrigued by its capacity to invoke seduction or repulsion in the viewer.”
Nordin traces her love of colour and form back to when she was 9; she made a birthday card for her mother – it “combined Lip Smacker packaging, string, paper and beads”
