Dick Barton, the mapping of South Georgia… and a solitude experiment

In 1951 Duncan Carse, the voice of ‘Dick Barton – Special Agent’, a BBC serial thriller with a huge daily audience, abruptly gave up his radio acting career to lead a six-man private Antarctic expedition during 1951-52 that planned to make the first accurate map of South Georgia. It failed to achieve this, but Carse organised a […]

On the tradition of pre-conceiving sculpture

This short clip is part of a Documentary film by Anna Thornhill. It features archive footage of sculptor Alan Thornhill working on a sculpture in Putney in 1989 and the resulting work, Exodus,  some 20 years later at Kingscote Park in Gloucestershire. Thornhill’s self-devised method of improvisation using clay allowed him to abandon the use of the sculpture […]

Leonora Carrington on intellectualising art

It is sad to hear Leonora Carrington has died aged 94. Her recent sculpture (in the link, seen here in the exhibition which she lived long enough to see open), is seemingly interpreted from the imagery of her earlier paintings. For me, it does not have the power of her two-dimensional work or earliest sculpture. Nevertheless, for […]

Sculpture stimulating the creativity of young people

Looking back to Summer 2006, this short film reminded me just how essential it is to be working with children from time to time. Jigsaw worked with several Herefordshire schools for those with special needs. We introduced elements: Fire, Water and Wind, and young people responded to aural stimulus. The results were fresh and lively: […]

Memory and Desire Film

Possibly the only time I’m ever going to appear in a principal cast list after Nick Rhodes… http://www.britfilms.com/britishfilms/catalogue/browse/?id=9F210A5C18bbd27D1CYtWJ498BC0 The sitting took place in North London in 2008 following an approach from the artist. This is the second of two bronzes created from the terracotta original.

New film – Spirit in Mass: Alan Thornhill

SPIRIT IN MASS: Journey into Sculpture is a 40 minute documentary which charts Alan Thornhill’s unconventional journey into sculpture. Discovering himself to be by nature an improviser yet committed to the time-honoured language and sensuous values of sculpture, he devised a way of working which embraced spontaneity and the unforeseen. This approach has inspired sculpture students […]