Summer Sculpture Show
Stephen Kettle, Dominic Welch, Janis Ridley, Mike Savage, Carol Peace, Rosie Sturgis, Colin Hawkins, Lawrence Dicks, Helen Denerley, Willow Legge |
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8 May to 3 July, 2010 Private View Saturday 8 May 4pm to 8 pm
Exhibition runs until 3 July Now open daily Wednesday to Saturday 11am to 4 pm
All other days by appointment |
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| The beautiful gardens and landscape setting surrounding West Sussex's Moncrieff-Bray Gallery, beneath the South Downs provide an idyllic setting for this innovative, contemporary sculpture exhibition. The works explore a variety of media including stone, bronze, stacked slate, beaten metal and glass. There will be small scale works for the home and larger spectacular pieces for the garden. | |||
click images to enlarge |
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| Lawrence Dicks is also fascinated by organic form in particular pods, seeds and embryos. His pared down bronze forms with their smooth tactile surface and subtle indentations hint at the life within, depicting the fragility of life and death through nature’s cycle. | |||
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Country Living magazine Helen Denerley article > Download (Adobe Reader format, 4.46mb) |
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| Helen Denerley’s imaginative animals are beautifully crafted from discarded scrap metal. Redundant agricultural machinery, tools and old motor bikes find a new life in her lithe and expressive creatures. Among her biggest commissions are the 24ft giant giraffes in Edinburgh. Helen’s work is now widely recognized resulting in world wide commissions. She has an extraordinary skill, born from her sense of draughtmanship and observation creating these graceful creatures from the discarded flotsam of our age. | |||
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| Colin and Louise Hawkins explore the fluidity, texture and transparency of glass taking the medium to a new level in their daring outdoor sculpture. Using a combination of traditional and modern techniques, translucent seed pods tremble on delicate aluminium stems, coloured ferns thrust their unfurling tendrils into the air and their shimmering glass spheres adapt the translucent and reflective properties of glass in a highly innovative way. | |||
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| Stephen Kettle works in a technique of stacked slate, creating his sculptures on both a miniature and a life-size scale. Thousands of polished slate pieces are layered one on top of the other and major commissions include portraits of R J Mitchell, the designer of the Spitfire for the Science Museum and Alan Turing, World War II code breaker for Bletchley Park. | |||
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| Willow Legge pursues her own personal vision and many of her sculptures which are inspired by nature, natural forms and wild-life. In her work as a modeller for Madame Tussauds and her portrait commissions she focused on outward appearance; however her more personal pieces are concerned with the inner essence of a character. She is constantly challenged and attracted to the dilemma of how she sees the inner world of things versus their outer appearances producing works of art that are quiet, contemplative and touching. more of Willow Legge's work can be viewed here |
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| Carol Peace’s figures inhabit an inner world of self-reflection. She derives her knowledge of the human body from detailed life drawings but the figures come from her imagination reaching beyond mere depiction. With their delicately balanced forms and rock like plinths the large-scale works relate to forms and volumes found in the landscape, their often elongated limbs and strange proportions lending them a surreal air. | |||
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| Another figurative sculptor, Janis Ridley creates figures which contain a metaphorical significance. While very human, they also have a contemplative quality of timelessness balanced between the inner and outer world. Influenced by Henry Moore, Giacometti and Elizabeth Frink her figures can be either calm and static or expressive of extreme movement reflecting her interest in dance. Ridley’s major commissions include her Mother and Child sculpture, Unfolding Love in Exeter Cathedral. | |||
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| The complex shapes and structures of organic forms especially plants and their seeds coupled with an interest in industrial and engineered works inform the work of Mike Savage. A silversmith by training, Savage exploits the malleable qualities of copper and aluminium where he uses the weld lines to cut and describe the form. The process of hammering and the conducted heat of the welding create the patina, colour and texture of the metal. | |||
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| South African born, Rosie Sturgis, specializes in wild life sculpture. However., these works are not just literally observed. Rosie’s sense of humour and feeling for natural life underlies her observation as she captures the humorous antics of meerkats, the charm of the blue footed boobies from the Galapagos Islands or the grace of a flock of avocets. | |||
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| The smooth surface of Kilkenny Limestone is the preferred medium for Dominic Welch’s fluid abstract forms with their curvilinear incisions. Welch worked for several years with the leading British sculptor Peter Randall Page who was a formative influence on his work. Many of his carved pod and sphere forms suggest seeds or embryos with the promise of future growth. They reflect the natural harmonies found with in nature but leave much to the imagination of the viewer. | |||