TEXT AND PORTRAIT BY GEOFF VIVIAN

from Artsource April – June 2013

Pierre Capponi is eyeing off a stack of ornate pressed tin sheets that once lined a room in

Pierre Capponi

an old house. The century-old building material is the main sculptural medium he uses to create life-sized figurative works that evoke Goldfields ghost towns, rural rubbish tips and desiccated mammals you sometimes find on dusty outback roadsides.

In his early teens he migrated here from Marseilles with his family, and pressed tin features in his earliest Australian memories.

“We lived in Smith Street in Highgate,” he says. “My father was reading the racing form guide one morning and there was a shadow of him on the pressed tin wall. I always thought that was a beautiful moment. Continue reading →