Rock musician Nick Cave in Brussels to open new exhibition of ceramic sculptures (VIDEO)

The inimitable gothic rock musician Nick Cave is in Brussels this week to open an exhibition of his 17 glazed ceramic figurines. In true Cave fashion,the figures tell the story of the Antichrist, from the cradle to the grave.

Cave has been working on the set of figurines – which he molds from clay before hand-colouring and firing – since 2020. “For about 30 years, I’ve collected these English figurines that my figurines are based on,” Cave told a VRT journalist during an interview at the Xavier Hufkens gallery yesterday. “They’re the kind that your grandmother might have had on her mantle.”

While his figurines are “whimsical and playful,” he said, “there’s a dark element that runs through them. It’s the story of the life of a man with horns, and it begins OK, but it gets darker as it goes on.”

The works are created in the style of Victorian Staffordshire flatback figurines, which were produced in the 19th-century, often by children. Cave’s own little sculptures in part reflect his emotions regarding his own children. He has lost two sons – one of them was just 15 when he died in an accidental fall from a cliff in Brighton. Cave is Australian but has lived for many years in England.

“Any parent who’s lost a child will tell you that the presence of the child is literally in everything,” he said. “The ceramics in my view are an embodiment of the spirit of this boy.” The figurines tell the story of the devil, who is born, grows up, falls in love, goes to war, kills his own child and is eventually shunned for his transgressions.

In the end, “the child forgives the old devil,” said Cave. “Forgiveness is something that we fundamentally need as human beings. I think we are increasingly losing that ability. The idea that we are broken people, that we make mistakes and that we can be forgiven, for our mistakes. We could use a little more mercy in our society right now, I would say.”

Cave in fact designs and makes many objects – from mugs to T-shirts to books for kids – and sells them on his Cave Things website. He appreciates that this kind of creative output “is not abstract,” like music is, he said. “Music is this mysterious thing that kind of vibrates in the air. This is something you pick up and hold and make with your hands. It’s a visual thing. My musicians friends, they hear the world. But I see the world rather than hear the world.”

He has a different relationship with music than with art, he explains. “With songs, I write them or I collaborate in writing them and make a record and send them out into the world. I don’t feel like I own them anymore. It’s then up to people to decide what these songs mean and to start their own relationship with them. But the ceramics is very different. They feel extremely, accutely personal, and I feel a need to protect them.”

Nick Cave’s exhibition The Devil: A Life runs at Xavier Hufkens’ St-Georges gallery until 11 May. Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds play the Sportpaleis in Antwerp on 30 and 31 October