24 November 2022

Physis unleashed

Yesterday saw another outing for my sculpture Physis. Commissioned by Pfizer to open up dialogues about their advancements in oncological treatments with cancer generally, and more specifically lung cancer, this interactive sculpture has previously seen outings at the Science Museum and the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester. Yesterday was the turn of Central Hall Westminster, next to Westminster Abbey.

The evening was a success, bringing together people from the Pfizer team and different cancer charities. Everyone had a chance to actively remove some of the tentacles of this enlarged lung tumour and there by engaging with the metaphor that human intervention can help push cancer into remission, diminishing the growth of its invasive nature. Slowly this cancerous growth, which suffocates a pure white boulder host body, is waning and the beautiful natural form underneath can begin to breath.

To watch a YouTube film about its making, click HERE

12 November 2022

Evolving landscapes

It's such a pleasure to be showing alongside my father John, grandfather Ivon, and great grandfather Alfred, in the exhibition The Hitchens Family: A Shared Love Of Landscape. Rarely do I get the chance to show alongside them and further understand our common threads: the theme of Landscape is obvious, but the subtleties of what Landscape mean are deep and various. My father had a broad and impressive retrospective here in 2020, where his familiar earlier paintings were in conversation with more recent abstractions and explorations into sculpture. My grandfather needs no introduction, but my great grandfather, Alfred, is often overlooked. His trade of portraiture was very accomplished, as too were his grander Pre-Raphaelite style canvases, but his intimate and quiet pastel landscapes are a delight to rival Samuel Palmer.

My brooding black sculpture of a brief moment in time when the midday sun cast a shadow from an ancient and now absent rock, takes the exploration of landscape in a different direction. And my durational day drawing of shadows cast from a rock; recording celestial time, geological time and human time, firmly route my work in the tradition of landscape art.

My creative immersion in landscape has only grown as I grow older and I give thanks for such a rich source of material worthy of further explorations into what it means to be human. This exhibition in the beautiful yet under-acknowledged Southampton City Art Gallery adds to themes of current national exhibitions exploring Landscape.

Exhibition continues until 4th March 2023
Open: 10am-3pm Mon-Fri
10am-5pm Sat
Closed Sun
www.southamptoncityartgallery.com
T: 0238 083 4536
Commercial Road, Southampton, SO14 7LP

Anima Mundi Gallery have a particularly fine tuned feel for the rhythm of the seasons and are holding group exhibitions around this under the collective title The Wheel Of The Year. The current exhibition is titled Samhain: a Gaelic festival which marks the end of the harvest season and the beginning of the darker, winter season.

I am truly delighted to be part of this topical and sensitive exhibition, by showing my sculpture Casting A Shadow Over The Cambrian. This is the cast shadow of an ancient piece of rock from the Paleozoic period as the midday sun fell upon its highly textured and weathered surfaces.

Exhibition viewable at www.animamundigallery.com
open 24/7 . 29th Oct - 16th Dec
For further information:
E: mail@animamundigallery.com
T: +44 (0) 1736 793121

As an RWA Academician, I'm delighted to be showing two new works within the 169 Annual Open.

I am exhibiting a sculpture titled Pause, a direct cast in concrete of an ancient rock and the brief moment in time when it cast a shadow at midday - human time, celestial time and geological time united.

The drawing titled 05.26-20.52/13.05.19/ST252149 is a durational drawing of a different, but equally ancient stone. A fifteen hour, non-stop drawing of the stone's shadow as the sun swept over my head between sunrise and sunset: made in, of and about the landscape.

These works continue themes I have been working on for a number of years; exploring time, transience and a shared reciprocity of the world we live in.

Exhibition runs until 8th January 2023
Open: Tue-Sun, 10am-5pm
RWA
Queens Rd
Clifton
Bristol
BS8 1PX
www.rwa.org.uk
T: 0117 973 5129

I am truly delighted, honoured even, to be showing my recent sculpture, Bearing Witness to Things Unseen at the centre of Chichester cathedral's nave. The forms part of an exhibition curated by Jacquiline Creswell of 25 sculptors from the Royal Society of Sculptors, in an exhibition titled Together We Rise.

Entering Chichester Cathedral from the western door, you are confronted by an irregular shaped, polished black portal standing central to the nave on its flag-stone floor. Appearing as an absence of space and matter within the fabric of the cathedral, this phenomenon holds your reflection as you approach.

Walking past the reflective portal reveals its dense black surface; parallel grooves and ridges running along its length as if having been extruded. Contrasting with the flat polished western end, the eastern end is a cave-like void, a craggy cast of a boulder which is now absent. This is the shadow of an ancient rock, cast by the rising sun on the equinox.

This uncanny object has a significant human presence because of its associative height and width and the ability to see oneself reflected in the flat polished western surface. It references time: deep geological time, celestial time and human time. Consequently, it also speaks of transience and the interconnected nature of what we share with the world and, importantly, of things larger than ourselves.

For more information about the exhibition, and interviews with the artists, click HERE.

Exhibition open: 27 June - 6 September
Mon - Sat 9am-5pm
Sun - 12pm-2pm
Chichester Cathedral
West Street
Chichester
PO19 1PX
www.chichestercathedral.org.uk
info@chichestercathedral.org.uk
01243 782595

Solo exhibition - Beyond Body
Preview Friday 29th April 6-8 pm.
Exhibition runs 30th April - 26th May

This exhibition takes the notion that there is the possibility of a state or being, sentient or otherwise, that is post-human and explores this through a comprehensive body of work which questions differences between animate and inanimate. By working directly with rock and morphing that with the human body, I present a series of hybrid works – uncanny and speculative beings which seek to re-conceive the human. These works become zoomorphic reformations that display strange living qualities, visceral unions between rock and flesh that comprehend the geological world and the flesh world as united.

These sculptures, paintings and drawings investigate the essence of the things we perceive – the physical, natural world and our place within it. They seek to understand the sublime qualities of rock: physically as the very earth that supports us and geologically as the almost ageless constant that resonates through time, giving perspective to our transient lives on this planet. They ask: what makes a being sentient? Is a mountain or stone a being? What is it to be a thing, and can a thing be without necessarily being human?

‘I am fascinated by the interconnectedness between the human and the non-human, what passes and what outlasts, as a means of exploring our relationship with impermanence.’

Black Swan Arts
2 Bridge Street
Frome
BA11 1BB
T: 01373 473980
www.blackswanarts.org.ok

Open: Mon - Sun. 10am - 4pm

I'm thrilled to be taking part in a group sculpture exhibition, alongside some wonderful sculptors, in the exhibition Forever In The Now. Opening on 23rd March in conjunction with The Lightbox @ Victoria Place, Woking, this promises to be an interesting dialogue between figuration and abstraction.
Exhibition runs until 22 May.

I shall be showing two shadow sculptures for the first time. Cast in concrete, these enigmatic forms make the fourth dimension three dimensional, referencing time and transience; celestial time, geological time and human time.

For further details about the exhibition: dates, times and artists, please click [here]

9th March

This evening, at the Science and Industry Museum Manchester, my sculpture PHYSIS will be unleashed on the public. Commissioned by Pfizer to open up a conversation about the progress treatments they have made with lung cancer, this sculpture aims to shock, fascinate and provoke inquiry in equal measure.

A long time in gestation, this participatory sculpture references a parasitic lung cancer tumour with its invasive tentacles multiplying and suffocating the pure white 'plinth' that supports it. Over the course of the exhibition the audience removes pieces of the root-like tentacles and in effect makes the cancer go into remission, helping the host body begin to breath again.

In this world, but not of this world...?
Using a digitally enlarged MRI scan of a real human lung tumour as the centre of a cancerous growth, this parasitic being has, I believe, a very beautiful form. Yet its invasive tentacles are clearly suffocating the pure white host body of the boulder which supports it.

Not only does this sculpture speak of lung cancer and the ability of humans to diminish it; through their physical interaction with the sculpture by taring away the softer tentacles, and Pfizer's advances in oncology treatments, but it also references our global relationship to planet Earth.

The interconnectedness of human life and the natural world is something I have been exploring in my work for many years - the relationship between the human and the non-human, animate and inanimate. This suffocating human cancer sits atop a pure white boulder - I don't think it is too hard to see the analogy of Humankind's relationship to planet earth as cancerous.

15th May

I'm delighted to say that I will be exhibiting my series of drawings Deconstructing Wholeness for the first time as a cohesive group, at Kevis House Gallery.

This important body of work for me was a direct link between a series of sculptures I had been working on at the same time, and the subsequent durational day drawings I am working on now, so it is a real pleasure for me to be able to see all the drawings in one space at the same time.

The title Trace is not only descriptive of the act of making the drawing, the track or line left by my pen as its builds up the drawing, but also describes the minimal marks which record something that has previously existed, in this case the shadow of a rock which was placed upon the paper as the origin of the drawing.

Working in series, I set up a system of prescribed rules where my hand became the objective tool to create the drawings. I was not focused upon an end result before I started, instead I let the system run until it was completed, and the drawing finished.

For all the drawings in this exhibition I have used humble pieces of Chert as the origin of the shadows which my set processes then explore further. These are common and unremarkable stones found in the fields close to my studio.

This series of drawings continues my fascination with rock as the material and conceptual backbone to my practice. It is a direct tool I use to create my work and by drawing it, in differing ways, I attempt to deepen my understanding of the interconnectedness between the human and the non-human, as a means of understanding our relationship with impermanence.

Exhibition:
10am-5pm Monday - Saturday
19 May - 30th June
Kevis House Gallery
Lombard Street
Petworth
West Sussex
GU28 0AG
T: 01798 215 007
E: mail@kevishouse.com

10th April

Great to see my forthcoming exhibition Trace, advertised in the Spring issue of the RA Magazine.

Trace will run from 19 May - 30 June at Kevis House Gallery, Petworth.