Sculpture, prints and drawings by gallery artists including: Anthony Abrahams, Nick Bibby, Jon Buck, Lynn Chadwick, Ann Christopher, Michael Cooper, Terence Coventry, Anita Mandl and Peter Randall-Page.
Anthony Abrahams lives and works in Gloucestershire, England. Having graduated from Cambridge with an Arts degree, he studied at the Anglo-French Art Centre in London. After a successful career in advertising he studied sculpture and soon developed his own distinctive language. Abrahams’ carefully poised, enigmatic figures follow a tradition in British sculpture that began in the 1950’s with sculptors such as Armitage, Butler, Chadwick, Frink and Meadows.
The exaggeration of some features and the repression of others, unified by formal and textural qualities, give his sculpture a personal and expressive quality as if Prehistoric fertility symbols had been reborn in the contemporary world. His emblematic figures, caught in playful postures, remind us of ourselves and of those familiar to us. Most recently, he has turned to an exploration of printing methods including solar prints, drypoint and monoprints. He handles this new medium with characteristic dexterity, producing images of great charisma and poignancy. Abrahams’ work is in private collections in the UK, USA and Europe. His most recent major piece, ‘Ozymandias, King of Kings’ can be seen at King’s Place, London.
Jon Buck was born in 1951 and studied at Nottingham and Manchester Art Schools. He was a Fellow in Sculpture at Cheltenham College of Art and the first Artist in Residence for Thamesdown Borough Council in 1983. He is a Member of the Royal West of England Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors. Buck has completed many public commissions including ‘Embracing the Sea’ for Deal, Kent, ‘Returning to Embrace’ for Canary Wharf in London, ‘In the Swim’ for West Quay Centre, Southampton and 'Ship to Shore' for Portishead Quays. His work is regularly exhibited both in UK and abroad and is held in many public and private collections.
From his earliest days Buck has pursued his own interests of the figure and the natural world. His recent work has become more iconic in form, centred on the ‘making’ processes of casting from clay and plaster into metal. The sculptures act as intercessors between our contemporary intellectual selves and a more ancient, unconscious self that connects with our primitive, fundamental nature.
Buck’s work has always been concerned with both human and animal forms. Over time his figures have evolved from life studies to more iconic images reminiscent of goddesses and fertility symbols. In recent years drawing has played an increasing role in his work and lately the two activities of drawing and sculpture have become thoroughly intermeshed. The graphic elements are not only integral to the form but are also essential to the reading of the object.
Terence Coventry studied at Stourbridge School of Art and the Royal College, London. Rooted in a strong figurative tradition, his sculpture exists in spite of any vagaries or trends in the art world. His is an intensely personal art, practical and unpretentious, honest and imbued with great integrity. Coventry’s work explores animals familiar to us: birds, bulls, cows and boars, images drawn from his long association with the land and its occupants. These are not idealised portraits of champion show animals nor nostalgic images from a rural past; his sculpture celebrates our interdependence with the animal world and that makes his subjects relevant to us. We recognise and feel connected to them. Coventry exhibits widely and regularly and has had several major solo shows over the past five years. Many of his sculptures are held in public and private collections both in Britain and USA.
Anita Mandl was born in Prague. She trained as a zoologist and studied sculpture at the Birmingham College of Art. She is a Member of the Royal West of England Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors. Her carvings, mostly in stone, are cast into editions in bronze and silver. Her deep knowledge of animal anatomy and behaviour informs her sculptures which are skilfully pared down to convey the very nature of a species. Their economy of language, their smooth and lustrous surfaces, together express the essential characteristics of an animal. The Royal West of England Academy has hosted a major solo exhibition of Mandl’s work and the Zoological Society of London has used her sculpture as prizes for the Stamford Raffles Award. She exhibits regularly and widely in England and the Channel Islands.
Charlotte Mayer was born in Prague and came to England with her family at an early age. She studied at Goldsmiths College, London and at the Royal College of Art of which she is an Associate. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors. Many of her sculptures are cast into bronze from originals made of materials found in the studio or the countryside: tree trunks, leaves, the stalks of umbellifers, balsa scantlings and wax. These associations with natural forms are a response to nature in the abstract: air, water, fire or growth. To maintain the poise and fragility of each piece when cast, stretches the limits of wax and metal to their extremes. The organic surfaces of her sculptures, their rigid structures and repeated elements are all used as vocabulary in a personal language of movement through form. Mayer has completed major public commissions for Alton Hospital, Hampshire, Basingstoke Hospital, Hampshire, The Barbican, City of London and Banque Paribas, Marylebone. Her work is held in many corporate and private collections and she exhibits regularly both in UK and abroad.