Interestingly enough, “casting about” is a term that originates from one of the oldest arts known to man: hunting. It isn’t, however, necessarily just about the ravenous search for game; the hounds would cast about for a long-lost scent, for the spoor of an animal that, whilst missing, is retained in memory. Many of Dalwood’s sculptures - like the one pictured above (“Aviatrix”) - carry the whiff of a reverent classicism. Her works betray a number of spirited yet precarious returns, fresh in their own right, to the many renditions of classicism that have persisted throughout history.
However, it would be wrong to presume that her work maintains some kind of blind obeisance to time-honoured tradition. In fact, there is something that is subtly playful and unassumingly voguish about the Dalwoodian art of casting. It is as if those flowing flowing tassles made of concrete, or the dragoon with a miniature Tower Bridge perched upon his hat, or that aeroplane resting on a neatly wrapped turban, are examples of how classically-inspired work, far from being always already conventional or hackneyed, can be reborn into something refreshingly imaginative.