Sunday, 5 May 2024
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Ricky Swallow
1 min read

Ricky Swallow may not be a household name around Australia, but in the world of arts – particularly sculpture – he is lauded.

When you get your own Wikipedia page you know you’ve made it.

Ricky was born in San Remo in 1974 and was educated locally at San Remo Primary and then Newhaven College.

He now lives and works in Los Angeles, first coming to prominence when he won the Contempora 5 Prize in Melbourne at the age of 25 in 1999.

He was later selected to be the Australian representative at the 2005 Venice Biennale.

One of his most famous pieces is called Killing Time, a still life in wood that took six months of hand carving to make.

Killing Time is a full-scale replica of the kitchen table Swallow ate on growing up in San Remo, where his dad was a fisherman and Swallow worked for a short time as a deckhand.

The table is covered with all manner of hand-carved sea-life -- various fish, lobster, oysters and crab -- which Swallow remembers catching during his childhood.