exhibition moves to YSP 14 Sept – 3 November; include a public portrait sitting 31 Oct/1st November and a portrait teaching date on 2nd November
News
News
Sculpture Series Heads: Woking 17 July
new exhibition until 18th August to coincide with publication of catalogue in association with Yorkshire Sculpture Park and The Lightbox Gallery and Museum.
summer sittings
Dame Fiona Reynolds recently sat for the Environment Series Heads, and Charles Saumarez Smith is a recent invited sitter.
Can YOU name a new landmark?
A new sculpture sits on the course of the former A3 separating the National Trust’s Hindhead Common and Devil’s Punch Bowl, GU26 6AB, following a snowy launch on 23rd March. During the course of the final 10 days working, lots of words started to come to me but none quite seemed to fit a final […]
To YSP: 2013 launches, exhibitions and teaching
An exciting year in preparation, with the last two heads of the Sculpture Series being completed and a Times photographer documenting progress of the critic sitter, Nancy Durrant, at Fittleworth in February. The Surrey University acquisition of the ‘Charmer’ bronze relief has been delivered but not yet sited. The Hindhead carving experience has been hard […]
Bovines and gut feelings
We use the term gut feeling as a visceral emotional reaction to something; often one of uneasiness. However this does not originate in the stomach but in the subconscious, which sends a message through the vagus nerve to the stomach. Half of our nerve cells are located within the gut and these are an important factor in […]
A newly discovered Roman Sculpture – the Fittleworth Iphigenia
This newly published paper tells the intriguing story of an important, newly discovered Roman sculpture. Click here to open (it is a 1mb file so may take a few seconds to access the archive); scroll down past the frontispiece page 1 to access the text and images on pages 2-8. A New Sculpture of Iphigenia […]
Strangling the sublime
Enthusing about the sort of things that goes through an artist’s mind in responding to place is thought-provoking. I biked around Hindhead’s Devil’s Punch Bowl distilling what I felt were the most visceral parts for me – a sublime landscape partially reborn, a heinous murder and narratives of good versus evil. Conan Doyle couldn’t have planned better, […]
Improvisation and carving
John Fowles’ short story The Ebony Tower introduces Henry Breasley, a veteran painter talking to his future biographer David Williams who happens to be a young, conceptual artist: ‘My dear boy. Painted to paint. All my life. Not to give clever young buggers like you the chance to show off. Don’t care a fart in […]
Roger Fry and the trap of the luxury art object
Beware the shallow gleam is a favourite phrase whilst advising students of sculpture who are toying with stone. The sourcing of fine stones from all corners of the globe takes real energy. The fine polish imparted thereon, the magical colour exposed – or depth verging on the chatoyant – is often found a stage too early […]
Where there is form, add clay
After all, it is not ignorance which damages the clarity of our portraits, but the accumulation of knowledge. Alain de Botton – ‘Kiss and Tell’, 1995 The Amesbury Preparatory School in Hindhead is unique in being the only purpose-built school by Edwin Lutyens. It had an arts festival in March 2012, the final day of which saw […]
Wight Man travels to The City
I met with art entrepreneur Sally Perry at the installation of the alabaster carving Wight Man in the foyer of Tower 42 in the heart of the City. Formally known as the Nat West Tower, the Nathan Kirsh-owned skyscraper is the second tallest in the City of London. It is interesting to see something so primitive […]
Farewell to the Jerwood Sculpture Collection
Most of the Jerwood Sculpture Collection is being auctioned at Sothebys, London in May 2012 to ‘enhance its dedicated support of the visual and performing arts’. I suppose such reinvestment must be supported albeit cautiously, despite the collection breaking up to move to pastures new. After the death of founder John Jerwood in 1991, the vision for the collection […]
Woking, an early Epstein portrait and a link to a lost work
I happened upon Jacob Epstein’s Italian Peasant Woman in Shawl recently, part of the remarkable sculptures in the Ingram Collection of Modern British Art assembled by media entrepreneur Chris Ingram, who has enabled his home town of Woking to see art which might normally grace the likes of Tate Britain, via its loan to the Marks […]
2011 works: The Human Clay exhibition
University of Surrey has a vibrant Public arts programme with 30 sculptures and busts around the campus, including works by Bridget McCrum, John Mills, Diane Maclean and William Pye. Jon Edgar’s solo exhibition there in Nov/Dec 2011 was linked with his Surrey Sculpture Society Autumn lecture, to which about 75 attended. For those that did […]
Roger Eliot Fry – why knowledge isn’t always a good thing
There is no feeling of inner life and all traces of sensibility in the handling have been polished away. Surely that must be Brian Sewell commenting on a contemporary conceptual work? Did not Roger Fry die in 1934? This quote is part of Fry’s consideration of this 4500 year old Dynasty IV portrait of King Chefren, […]
Poesis and immortality
What is behind the urge for making? I’ve always suspected it is something to do with our mortality and the desire to be around for longer than strictly possible, as well as just feeling like something that one needs to do. Plato’s Symposium, written around 360 B.C., considers a tea party dialogue on the meaning […]
Portrait sculpture – conscious, subconscious, unconscious?
Worthing Museum has an interesting sculpture exhibition on until January 2012, featuring the Latvian-born Dora Gordin (1895-1991) – she later changed this to Gordine – who settled in London after studying music and art in Paris. It is co-curated with Dorich House, where the artist lived and where the Gordine archive continues to reside in […]
Stone: whose work is it anyway?
I receive letters like this once a fortnight. They effectively promise to do sculptors’ hard work for them at a very reasonable cost. I send a small model or maquette to China, and it will be factored to my dream size in granite or my chosen material; hardness no object. Permanence guaranteed. All from the […]
A contemporary search for Petworth Marble (or Winklestone)
In the early 1800s, Petworth Marble rivalled many of the stones which were routinely imported from the continent, in both beauty and quality. A kind of shell marble occurring in the Wealden clay at Petworth, its quarrying was concentrated on the Egremont estate at Kirdford and there are accounts of industry at Plaistow. Also called […]