Shown in the ING Discerning Eye exhibition in the Mall Galleries, London, November 2024.
This sculpture, composed of a hammer and nails, symbolises the act of the oppressed overthrowing their oppressor. The nails represent the oppressed and the hammer represents their oppressor.
The metaphor raises a few questions . How did the nails become driven into the hammer? By another hammer? If so, is that other hammer a potential oppressor? Is the (unseen) second hammer just an oppressor in its own right, simply using the nails for its own ends?
Jar opener, spinning top, document clip, hand. 27x9x5cm (excluding hand). Feb 2024
An assemblage of household items (a jar opener, a spinning top and a document clip). In the photograph the assemblage is paired with a human hand to create an ambiguous form. There are suggestions of a flowering plant, a human form or an apparatus with a wheel.
The sphere that’s resting on top of the bottle is an old tennis ball that has lost all of its coating and that seems to have been left outside in the elements for a very long time. I think I found it in the garden, probably lost there by the previous owner of the property. Because of its colour, patina and texture it looks a lot more substantial than it actually is.
The shape of the bottle and the fact that the glass isn’t of uniform thickness suggests a vintage vessel, but it is actually a contemporary supermarket salad dressing bottle that was still being used for its original purpose the day before it was requisitioned for this sculpture. The salad dressing company were probably trying to tap into the current demand for artisan foodstuffs and consumer goods.
The found objects in this sculpture are unmodified and there is minimal physical input or compositional decisions that need making in the creation the work (The ball has to be place on top of the bottle, pure and simple). This probably makes the piece a form of readymade.
The Oppressor Empaled. A sculpture about oppression.
Hammer, nails, wood. 18x34x26cm. May 2023.
This sculpture was shown in the ING Discerning Eye exhibition in the Mall Galleries, London, November 2024. It is a work of political art, in the form of a metaphor for oppression and rebellion. The work shows a hammer empaled by nails. Part of the concept behind the sculpture is that the hammer is being impaled by the objects that it normally hits – the nails. The hammer is a symbol of oppression and dictatorship and the nails are symbols of the oppressed. But the sculpture poses a question – how did the nails manage to drive themselves into the hammer? Nails by their nature need a hammer, or a stand-in for a hammer, in order to be effective and to fulfil their purpose. Were the nails hammered into the hammer by another hammer? In that case the nails are not a metaphor for the oppressed rising up against their oppressor (the hammer) using their own power, but are more like the followers of another power (another hammer?) that may turn out to be as oppressive as the hammer that they’ve empaled.
The leaders of liberation movements against repression often become oppressors or dictators in their turn.
This sculpture is a development of an idea that I had in 2010 when it started life as a drawing of a hammer with three nails driven into it. Since then it developed into a 3D sculptural work composed of a hammer nailed directly onto a flat surface as though pinned down. The iteration here has the hammer suspended above a surface and with many more nails driven into it so that it’s starting to resemble a nail fetish figure.
A sculpture composed of a pair of large pliers and a pair of small pliers. I suppose it fits into the category of sculpture made with found objects or sculptures made of scrap. The pliers are held together by a magnet, although they do actually balance without it, if a bit precariously. The resulting figure resembles a person with arms held high and with horns. Maybe a demon. The figure actually reminds me of a bodybuilder: the stocky torso and muscular legs, not to mention the pose.
A mole wrench and an oil can cap create an anthropomorphic sculpture suggesting an embracing couple.
The sculpture came about when I was about to put teak oil on my kitchen worktop, which was something I’d been putting off for the previous five years. The cap of the tin of teak oil was rusted in place due to lack of use and I had to take it off using a mole wrench. Holding the resulting wrench and cap combination instantly I sensed the potential for it to be a work of art in some way, partly because the oil can’s cap resembled an eye when the light struck it. At first I thought that the assemblage perhaps resembled a fish, but after a bit of turning it round in my hands I saw human forms emerge.
This is a good example of the way that people can interpret objects differently to the nature of the objects themselves. I believe that our brains interpret things based on a hierarchy of significance. The brain sees something and then scans down a list of likely possibilities for what the thing is, with highly significant things at the top of the list. At the very top of the list is ‘human being’. Very much lower down the list, if it’s on the list a all, is ‘mole wrench’. When you see a mole wrench in a tool box you automatically go straight to the ‘mole wrench’ item way down your brain’s list, because the context in which you see the wrench is strongly suggestive that it is indeed a mole wrench that you’re looking at. However, in the context-free setting of the photo above your brain has to work harder and has to consult its built-in list of possibilities, at the top of which is ‘human being’. The wrench possesses something of the shape of a human form, and thus the connection is made. The fact that the wrench is standing in a way that no mole wrench in the real world could do without support helps to amplify the effect.
A ceramic pot with a bicycle saddle. The bicycle saddle is attached to a conventional bicycle seat pillar which is inserted into the narrow opening at the top of the ceramic vessel.
In the context of the sculpture the shape of the bike seat automatically evokes the form of an animal head.
Whenever the words bicycle seat, animal head and art are mentioned in the same sentence the name of Pablo Picasso and his 1942 work, Bull’s Head, inevitably come to mind. But we mustn’t let the great man’s work prevent the rest of us from using the same idea. He probably wasn’t the first person to think it up anyway, just the most famous. Remember, it was him who said “Good artists copy. Great artists steal”
In my sculpture the bicycle saddle doesn’t only suggest an animal head. Something about its shape also evokes the concept of a sail or of some form of crest shaped modern architectural structure.
Below is a variation of the sculpture where I’ve cleaved the saddle firmly to its animal head incarnation by adding a pair of headphones. The headphones have the pleasing effect of looking like a weird pair of eyes as well as a pair of headphones. The idea of adding the headphones came to me simply because there was pair of headphones lying on the floor next to the sculpture.
An anthropomorphic sculpture made of found objects.
The doll’s head was found buried in my garden and the empty custard carton was found in my kitchen.
The custard carton has been squeezed to extract every last bit of custard from inside. It was a simple matter to create a ready-made sculpture by attaching the doll’s head to the cap of the carton, especially as the head was rather sinisterly only the front of the head, thus it possessed a convenient rim that could be gripped by the carton’s screw cap.
With the doll’s head attached, the custard carton is instantly transformed from being a crumpled piece of consumer waste into a doll’s body or a baby’s body. A quite disturbing body at that.
The interpretation of the carton as a body in this sculpture is the result of the phenomenon of pareidolia, which is the tendency to see significant forms where they don’t exist (Faces in clouds and such-like). The presence of the doll’s head helps of course. Art, especially modern and contemporary art, is hugely reliant on pareidolia, as it allows a circle with a couple of dots inside it to become a human face.
Three hammers bound together with shoe laces. The hammers are different sizes, creating a dynamic visual effect and implying a differential power status between the hammers.
The fact that the hammers are bound together renders them useless as hammers, making them impotent. However, maybe they’re not bound together to reduce their power – maybe they are bound together to create unity. Maybe the price of unity is a reduction in individual power. But is the price of unit a reduction in group power?
The hammers exhibited in my solo show at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Cornwall, 2022.
The work is a study of power, restraint and impotence. It’s also a nice composition. The inspiration came in my studio when I placed one hammer directly on top of another one (By chance or deliberately? I don’t know).
An installation composed of three clothes racks forming a pyramid.
The pyramid of racks is this size purely because I only possess three clothes racks. Given a larger space and a larger number of racks the pyramid can be huge. You may notice in the photo that as well as a pausity of racks the low ceiling in the room mitigates against the construction of monumental artworks.
This is a typical example of a work that almost created itself (I thought of it while I was moving the racks so that I could dry my washing). I have often admired the interplay of the horizontal and diagonal lines in the racks while I was using them for their proper purpose, but it was only recently that the idea of stacking them occurred to me.
This work is probably partly inspired by the art movements of constructivism, dada and arte povera.
The Oppressor Impaled by the Oppressed. Hammer and nails sculpture.
Hammer, nails. This version, May 2022. Original concept, 2010.
This sculpture is partly a metaphor for oppression and rebellion. The work shows a hammer nailed to a surface by nails. Part of the concept behind the sculpture is that the hammer is being impaled by the objects that it normally hits. How did the nails manage to impale the hammer? Were the nails hammered into the hammer by another hammer? In that case the nails are not necessarily a metaphor for the oppressed rising up to overthrow their oppressor (the hammer) using their own power, but are more like the followers of another power (another hammer?) that may turn out to be as oppressive as the hammer that’s been overthrown. The use of handyman’s tools such as hammers, pliers and spanners is a recurring feature of my artwork.
The work in my solo show at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Cornwall, 2022
Metamorphosis (from pie containers to insect larvae)
Wood (recycled food containers). 2021.
An assemblage or sculpture fabricated from recycled wooden pie containers. The pie containers, for Charlie Bigham pies (mainly fish pies with the odd cauliflower cheese in there), are stacked as curved forms suggestive of insect larvae such as caterpillars or grubs. Insect larvae undergo metamorphosis when they change into the imago or mature form of the insect. Here the pie containers have undergone a similar metamorphosis by turning into the insect larvae.
This work reflects my interest in the natural world and the environment, as well as my concerns for environmental issues caused by human activity (this work being an example of recycling or upcycling of consumer waste). An example of art made from scrap material. A form of arte povera perhaps.
A sculpture or assemblage composed of G clamps. G clamps are usually used for holding work together temporarily, such as when components are being glued together. Here the G clamps are holding on to each other so that they are part of a structure themselves rather than an instrument for creating a structure. The angle of the piece gives the structure a feeling of instability. This could have allusions to the instability of the modern world that we have constructed through our use of industry and technology, where the very means by which we have constructed our world leads to its inherent precariousness, especially now that we are inflicting such serious damage on the environment.
G clamp, nails, wooden sphere. 20 x 20 x 15cm. 2022.
This sculpture or assemblage is almost an accidental artwork. The nails in the sphere were put there to attach other objects to. The G clamp is there to hold the two halves of the sphere together (It’s composed of two hemispheres glued together. One of the skills needed in art is the ability to see the unexpected.
A sculpture constructed from vinyl records. The star-shaped object at the top of the tower, which looks like a radio transmitter, is composed of pawns from a chess set (a recurring theme in my work).
The work in my solo exhibition at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Penzance, Cornwall. May – June 2022
There’s another work composed of vinyl records here.
12 inch vinyl records Dimensions variable May 2022
A sculptural work composed of a number of 12 inch vinyl LP records arranged on the floor. The records are placed on blocks to hold them above the floor.
These photos were taken at my solo exhibition at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Cornwall, in 2022.
Part of the appeal of this work, to me, is in the fact that the vinyl records of which it is composed are ruthlessly precise and austere in their physical presence – perfect discs of shiny black plastic – but that they contain in themselves the information for producing music, perhaps the most ethereal of art forms. The manner in which the discs seem to hover above the ground seems to link the physical nature of the records with the floating, insubstantial nature of music. The physical delicacy of the analogue information storage system which contains the information about the music on the disks (the grooves) is also significant.
There’s another work composed of vinyl records here.
An assemblage composed of a kitchen sieve placed in front of an old framed mirror. The reflection of the mesh of the sieve in the mirror creates interesting Moiré fringes as it interacts with the actual mesh.
When a person looks at their reflection in the mirror through the mesh of the sieve the observer experiences a degree of psychological distancing from their reflected self, almost as though the reflected person is in a strange cage.
A sculpture constructed from G-clamps attached to a speed clamp.
Normally clamps are used in order to hold other objects together (such as glued pieces of wood while the glue dries). Here the clamps are holding each other together. The assemblage can be interpreted as a metaphor for human society holding itseld together by using its own inherent qualities and strengths.
An version of this concept shows the clamps at an angle – possibly a metaphor for the precariousness of the cohesion of human society.
A surreal or dada found object sculpture made from a cobbler’s shoe last with a cigarette inserted into the circular hole in the last that is designed to accommodate a handle. The last is mounted on a lamp stand.
The sculpture utilises the human sensory condition known as pareidolia, the interpretation of shapes as human faces, to create a surreal head. Pareidolia is essential for the interpretation of a lot of art, especially art in which faces are merely suggested by, say, a few strokes of a paintbrush. In some art pareidolia is actually a curse though – think of the number of abstract images that are ruined when you see an unintentional face in them. The sculpture’s title, Last Cigarette, utilises the human tendency to reinterpret words to create puns – in this case the word ‘last’ referring to the wooden cobbler’s last, meaning that the cigarette is the last’s last cigarette.
The Oppressor Impaled by the Oppressed. Hammer and nails sculpture
Hammer, nails, plank. June 2015.
A sculpture composed of a hammer nailed to a plank of wood. The hammer is being empaled by the objects that it normally hits. This can be interpreted as a metaphor for oppression and rebellion, and it’s also a study in irony. How did the nails come to be impaling the hammer? Were the nails hammered into place by another hammer? In this case the nails may not be the downtrodden oppressed rising up to overthrow their oppressor using their own power, but are possibly the followers of another power (another hammer?) that may turn out to be as oppressive as the hammer they’ve empaled.
Other versions of this piece have the hammer on a horizontal surface, such as on the top of a plinth, while further iterations use different numbers of nails. The vertical version shown here is in some ways disturbing because the vertical configuration gives more of an impression of the hammer being violently empaled rather than simply nailed down to the spot. It is also disturbingly suggestive of a crucifixion in Christian iconography.
