Musician Nick Cave will present a new body of work at Xavier Hufkens’s Burssels gallery in 2024. The exhibition, scheduled to open April 5, 2024, will feature Cave’s “The Devil—A Life (2020–22),” his first major series of visual art....
Musician Nick Cave will present a new body of work at Xavier Hufkens’s Burssels gallery in 2024. The exhibition, scheduled to open April 5, 2024, will feature Cave’s “The Devil—A Life (2020–22),” his first major series of visual art. Comprising 17 glazed ceramic figurines, the show will illustrate the life story of the Devil, drawing inspiration from Victorian-era Staffordshire flatback figurines.
Cave’s songwriting and music compositions often intertwine with themes of religious faith, reflecting his complex relationship with Christianity.
“What started as a desire to create a single small devil figure as a vehicle for an intense red glaze became a journey towards some kind of absolution from a series of shattering events,” Cave said in a press statement for the exhibition. “[The ceramic works]?—?and in fact, all the songs that I write?—?are about the idea of forgiveness, the idea that there is a moral virtue in beauty. It’s a kind of balancing of our sins.”
Born in Australia in 1957, Cave pursued painting before embarking on his illustrious music career, which includes leading bands like The Birthday Party from 1973 to 1983 and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds from 1984 to the present. Alongside his recent venture into ceramics, he’s also authored a memoir entitled Faith, Hope and Carnage. Cave studied painting at the Caulfield Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, until he moved to Berlin and London in the 1980s.
Cave’s ceramic pieces debuted in Finland at the Sara Hildén Art Museum in 2022, as part of an exhibition that also featured works by Thomas Houseago (who is shown by Xavier Hufkens) and American actor Brad Pitt.
