Reinterpret the classics

Serious art requires serious materials. So when artist Neil Zakiewicz recreated a series of classical stone sculptures from upholstery foam, the past and present met in an uncomfortable, soft situation.

Part of the gravitas of a classical sculpture is its sense of permanence. Heroes are commemorated in stone - the meditation and internal struggles of Rodin's Thinker have as much to do with the sombre weight of bronze and marble as the figure, leaning forward.

In a mockery of the authority and importance of high art, Neil Zakiewicz carves sculptures which mimic, and twist, its icons.

Here, the oversized, raised fist which the socialist realist movement used as symbol of power is re-imagined as the "fist of art". Made from foam rather than stone, Pencil Holder portrays the raised fist of power awkwardly brandishing a bunch of pencils.

They may look similar, but foam feels and behaves far less seriously than marble or stone. Invented for comfort rather than permanence, it's podgy to touch and sags beneath the weight of its massive wooden pencils.

Foam's unique form-making properties - the way it can hold and shift its shape - were designed for comfort rather than permanence. Zakiewicz's sculptures are made to give way and have difficulty holding an austere, or forbidding, statuesque pose; unlike the statues they mimic, they buckle under their own weight.

Like heroic sculptures, taxidermy turns dead animals into permanently life-like fixtures. Zakiewicz's wall-mounted animal heads are reverse taxidermy: pelt-less animals which are carved, instead of stuffed, from upholstery foam. He carves the foam with bread knives instead of chisels, giving them their irreverently jagged and rough-hewn edges.