Stephen Ralph: Life is long

Stephen Ralph: Life is long exhibition text by Naomi Evans It is certainly a miracle that a formless block of stone could ever have been reduced to a perfection that nature is scarcely able to create in the flesh. Giorgio Vasari on Michelangelo’s Pietà (1498-99), St Peter’s Basilica, Rome.[1] The three sculptures presented in Stephen Ralph’s solo exhibition Life is Long at The Commercial are the culmination of three years’ work, starting in 2018 with the challenge of procuring marble from a remote quarry in Chillagoe, located 300kms inland from Cairns in Far North Queensland. Once a thriving mining...