St. Martin’s School of
Art with Anthony Caro was a rich environment for making sculpture.
I took to the cut and welded steel mediums of St. Martins and my first
show was a response to waves, waterfalls and clouds in the Kentish
countryside where I grew up.
Two years later an exhibition at The National Gallery, Southbank
entitled “Roads” comprised assemblages of road detritus scavenged from
the City’s asphalt.
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In 1982 Australia was a revelation. I was instantly inspired by the
light and scale, the ubiquitous use of corrugated-iron and the
regularity of submarines traversing Bondi’s pacific horizons.
An ambitious, international laser-project planned in the mid-80’s
culminated in a lot of publicity and an appetite for making intricate
lightboxes. The Artangel Trust worked on a proposal to light up London
with my laser-blue submarine outline.
Returning to Australia via Perth, I lectured in sculpture at Curtin
University and thrived on the opportunities for showing and the vast
studio spaces of the empty warehouses of Fremantle. The Goldfields
around Kalgoorlie were littered with remnants of past-toil, strewn
across an indigenous landscape, half-buried in ochre-coloured topsoils.
Back to Melbourne and St. Kilda in ’91 to the home of my
great-grandparents. Enrolling to do an M.A. at the Victorian College of
the Arts led to exhibitions at the Australian Centre for Contemporary
Art (ACCA) and participating in a sculpture retrospective at Heide
Museum of Modern Art.
Two remarkable Melbourne studios provided inspiration, Baymour Court
behind the Esplanade Hotel in St. Kilda and a glass penthouse above the
old St. Vincent’s Hospital overlooking the The Royal Exhibition
Building.
At the start of the millennium we built the Mia Mia studio, inspired by
Alexander Calder’s. This provided an opportunity for working in larger
scale with re-enforcement steel (reo) and wire mesh. These heavy
industrial materials enabled a subtle interplay between internal and
external form.
Covid lockdown was an opportunity for uninterrupted focus and maximising
resources. A small and dark space facilitated working with l.e.d.
lighting, acrylics and an assortment of the materials at hand.
Five Walls Gallery in Footscray with its five spaces is always worth a
visit. One Star Gallery in North Melbourne combines eclectic, quality
art with excellent coffee and the “Big Sculpture St.Kilda” show has
become an important stage for contemporary Melbourne artists.
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