Thomas Bucich - Sovereign, 2025 - Plaster, steel, silver leaf, antique Baccarat crystal and antique dome - 50x22cm

This artwork is from Thomas Bucich's series 'Heart Relics'. This evolving series explores raw love and devotion, inspired by Thomas' fascination with ancient religious relics. During his early art education, he spent hours looking at medieval and renaissance art which included the relics of saints, often encased in elaborate vitrines. This led to his own exploration of the contemporary relic, often abstract remnants of nature, and in this case, abstractions of the heart.

The heart is sculpted with raw gestural marks suggesting a remnant of nature, scarred and worn, but adorned with a 23 karat golden flame, signifying the burning light of hope. Some hearts are layered in pure purple or blue pigments where others are burnished with a simple dark glaze.

This particular piece, titled Sovereign, amplifies the scale of the human heart in a royal purple pigment.  The heart radiates at its top with silver gilt crystal rays. The work is set within an antique French glass dome.

Thomas Bucich is a New York native now based in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. With a career spanning thirty years, his multidisciplinary practice includes drawing, painting and sculpture. His materials include stone, bronze, wood, pigment, found objects, charcoal and paint. He describes how “the innate need to create drives the plasticity in my practice and allows me to roam between the disciplines in some sort of poetic collision.”