Artist Statement

General Statement

I make artworks for gallery exhibition, public sited commissions and private or corporate ownership. The sculptures are produced to a high standard, both in terms of artistic content and physical construction.

When producing a public commission, I ensure that the design is truly site specific. Relevant themes are used, often relating to points of local history. Although I often explore complex ideas, the works remain accessible and of bold visual interest. The overall structural form is carefully considered, responding to the immediate environment of the sculpture site.

I have much experience of working with fabrication companies, engineers, educational institutions, commissioning bodies and arts organizations.

 

Scratching the Surface

My personal visual language, whether developed or learnt, uses forms and constructions. This language, however, is not a direct method of communication, but more like a poetic reflection. The sculptures do not represent or describe. They reference and imply. A level of interpretation is needed to consider meanings within the works, but I attempt to avoid literal illustration. Responses are directed rather than dictated.

At the heart of everything is 'the object'. Artwork as object. Object as signifier.

In a way, I see the artist's role as making a sense of living within, and being a part of, this world and clarifying or expressing an experience of this being. My art is a response. A system within a context. It can often be subtle, complex and specific, all at the same time.

When I think of formative experiences concerning aesthetics and the potency of 'the object', I look back to my childhood. Like many children, hours and hours of my early life were spent playing with things and, of course, drawing. These experiences are personal, but also collective. I am not interested in sentimental autobiographical memories, as such, but the developmental relationship between a 'made thing' and an 'experience of the world'. We make connections. We learn to imbue significance into forms and materials.

I wasn't born and raised in the British Museum or National Gallery. Contact with antiquities, historic masterworks, marble and bronze, came later on. In the beginning there were bright monochrome plastic bricks, curved edges, vacuum moulding, diecast cars, mechanical construction sets, kits in boxes, replicas, models, cardboard, hidden treasures, my key-ring collection, the usual all consuming potential of making and playing. The root of learning a visual language.

Many things add up in the end: television, my Dad's garage, the Manx Museum, discovering a book about Willem de Kooning in the school library. A thread of interests and experiences, leading to a point where I began to make art.

So much art, from throughout history, continues to inspire me, whatever the genre. Here is a non exhaustive short-list of mostly sculptors who have made a lasting impression on my work (in alphabetic order): Anthony Caro, Eduardo Chillida, Joseph Cornell, Tony Cragg, Grenville Davey, Richard Deacon, Marcel Duchamp, Philip Guston, Eva Hesse, Donald Judd, Phillip King, Bryan Kneale, Jeff Koons, Claes Oldenburg, Julian Opie, Meret Oppenheim, Pablo Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg, Kurt Schwitters, William Tucker, Andy Warhol, Rachel Whiteread, Alison Wilding, Richard Wilson. This list could easily be expanded. There are also musicians, writers, film-makers and thinkers who continue to affect my practice. My ongoing research leads me into areas such as the sciences, history, archaeology, folklore, religion and so on.

So, what do I do?

I return, repeatedly, to themes, motifs and forms.

I tend to replicate a certain 'finish' in the sculptures, often similar to manufactured processes. Artworks are constructed.

Colour is often used as a final stage of fabrication. Surface is unified through a protective layer of colour.

There is a sense of utility in some of the works, an interest in the urban/domestic. An implied purpose can be seen.

Fragmentation recurs. Fragmentation is the transformation of one state of being to another.

An idea of interaction is explored, but only in a potential sense, a perceptual interaction perhaps.

Collecting, displaying, searching, making and doing.

When a recognisable object is referenced in a work, there is still a consideration of formal sculptural concerns. Volume, balance and scale remain important. Sculpture is as much about the manipulation of space, as the object within that space.

A sculpture is made. It has not existed before, although it can never exist on its own. It is created within an historic, cultural context. Before it is even begun, it is defined by a multitude of influences. It may be similar to something else. It may only be distinct in intention or interpretation. It may get lost amongst the transient clutter of everything else. Or it may have something that makes it last a little longer.

Paul Lewthwaite, December 2007.