Toy Boy

Artist Statement: Toy Boy reimagines Mickey Mouse, wrapped in paper and string as though gift-wrapped, to explore themes of nostalgia, consumerism, and societal expectations.
The familiar figure is both playful and constrained, suggesting how cultural icons, like toys, are often commodified and defined by external forces.
The title itself carries a double entendre, referencing both the innocence of childhood and the adult notion of a “toy boy”—a youthful, disposable companion.
This layered meaning reflects on how we package and present both objects and people, highlighting the tension between innocence, desire, and the complexities of modern life.

Medium:  Polychrome
Dimensions: 120 cms high
Date: 2025
Condition: New

CHG Director's Statement: Glassborow’s design and imagination is superior! Call it intuitive, imaginative, creative. Steve says much of the impetus for a sculpture comes from a phrase or sentence that comes to mind after an observation.

Art deco and beauty, particularly the feminine, has been a constant influence in Glassborow’s art along with the element of science fiction. He is fascinated in creating a figurative form and aligning it with another era. The finished product is edgy and fascinating to perceive.

In more recent years, Glassborow himself has taken over the selection of coloured oxides and the patination process. The outcome is a more sophisticated colour application and surface texture.

We often judge quality through the aesthetic, and Steve’s figurative work is highly relatable and expressive.
Designing a simplistic interpretation is, in reality, far from simple. A seemingly simple piece requires a finesse for the flow of line and composition, which is engendered in the Glassborow style. Once you throw in a suggestion of sensuality and an understated patination, you have the core essence of this designer/sculptor.

Helen Hopcroft Introduction: Glassborow’s technically accomplished body of work delights in the contrast between the weight of his materials and themes of lightness and fluidity. The solid, enduring quality of the bronze is used to counterpoint the apparent weightlessness of the human figure. Glassborow, who has worked alongside the Australian ballet, using many of its top dancers as his models, clearly communicates the sense that gravity- like other physical laws- is not inviolable.

Like a skilled magician, his work celebrates the magic trick of the imagination.
Yet like a magician compelled to reveal his tricks, Glassborow often deconstructs the process of creation. The figures are sometimes revealed in their unformed or half-formed states. For example, ‘point’ moves from an aesthetic that recalls the raw clay of the early modelling process, through a roughly finished and patinated green bronze, to the lush gold of the polished metal. The figure incorporates both naturalistic and mechanistic elements, creating a poetic juxtaposition between the material of antiquity and the imagery of the age of automaton. Find the full introduction here.

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