2010 Finalists • Broomhill National Sculpture Prize
The ten finalists
The Ten finalists have a distinctive mixture of styles and influences, some with a very naturalistic approach while other pieces have quite a futuristic and interactive feel.
“We’re delighted with our finalists creations and are confident that our visitors will really enjoy this addition to the Broomhill programme. This exhibition exemplifies the diverse forms that sculpture can take, some of the finalists pieces have a serious message, others are simply fun and interactive literally inviting you inside for a closer look!” • Rinus van der Sande, Broomhill owner.
Congratulations to the following ten finalists.
Angela Read • Organism
I work with the theme of desire and ideas Freudian, in the context of anxiety, loss and control. I am interested in obsessive, ritualised ways of working. My working methods involve ways of manipulating materials, the finished object being a type of fetish.
This piece was initially derived from line drawings that I have then interpreted using cable ties as a repetitive motif. The materials used are industrial and man made, these work in opposition to the organic nature of the structure itself.
The appearance of the piece is akin to a cell or microorganism such as may be found within a human or animal body but being shown out of context gives it an alien aspect.
Biography
I studied Fine Art at North Devon College and Bristol UWE; I am based in North Devon. I have had work exhibited in group shows in the South West and London. In 2006 I won the Centrespace Gallery award, I had a solo show there in 2007 ‘Killing Time’.
Charlie Hawkins • Shelter • Judges Special Commendation
With this piece I have tried to create a shelter, a hide, where you can sit for a while, enjoy the space and take in the view through a narrow aperture. The form is loosely based on Ned Kelly’s armour with a touch of Frank Gehry thrown in (think ‘Guggenheim Museum Bilbao’).
For those not familiar with the Kelly story, he was an Australian outlaw/folk hero who because of poverty and injustice took to robbing banks. For his last stand, a shoot out with the police, he made a suit of armour, this iconic image was used many times by the painter Sidney Nolan.
The 1,200 shingles were cleaved from oak and chestnut using green woodworking tools. I have enjoyed the exploration of mixing a traditional skill in a contemporary form.
Biography
I am currently completing an Art and Design access course at Lowestoft College with a view to studying Fine Art at degree level. I enjoy working in different media using natural and sometimes reclaimed materials in my sculptures. Last year I was commissioned to make a piece for a new sustainable energy building in Suffolk. My other love is painting both in oils and fresco.
Claudia Borgna • Oasis • Judges Special Commendation • Public Speaks Winner
To this point all my artificial landscapes have been intentionally ephemeral apparitions intended for the moment and in continuous flux. The underlying core thoughts in my work are the issues of consumerism in the natural realm. I am fascinated by the contradictions of our world and wonder where our human natural instincts will lead in this evolutionary journey of cycles. The intangible, hybrid palm trees’ fronds, fretting under the transformative power of the wind (and of all the other natural elements that eventually will interact and interfere), might provide yet another moment where the ephemeral and the material coexist and continuously reinforce one another in a rhythmic sublime dance of creation and destruction.
Biography
Claudia Borgna graduated from Genoa University in Foreign Literature in 1998 and received a Fine Art BA degree from London Metropolitan University in 2005. Since then she has been exhibiting nationally and internationally attending diverse fellowship residency programmes. She is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell, the PollockKrasner Grant and the Royal British Society of Sculptors Bursary Award as well as the Pritzker Foundation Endowed Fellowship Award. In 2009 she was shortlisted for the BBC2 documentary: ‘School of Saatchi’.
David Booth • Punched 3611 times, Folded multiple times, Finally stood up.
Sometimes there are times in everyone’s life when you need to escape, times of illness or grief. I have used folds as my metaphor for distraction techniques. Their repetition can provide comfort, time to heal and escape. The varied widths of folds represent how this is not always as effective at different times in life; the folds become calmer and smaller to signify comfort. 3,611 is the number of holes I punched to thread the sculpture. I chose to thread the vinyl on steel (to illustrate personal strength or support that you need to find) and I have sculpted into stems, inspired by fluid and organic qualities to create movement and that reaches for the sky to find that escape.
Biography
Originally from Manchester, I am currently enjoying studying Fine Art at Derby University where i will graduate next year. I exhibited at the Wirksworth Arts Festival 2009 and won the sculpture prize at the Derby City Open 2009. I have been commissioned to create a sculptural intervention for the Wirksworth Festival 2010 and I am scheduled to exhibit at Derby City Hospital from October to December. I am looking forward to what next year will bring.
David Pratt • MPV • Judges Special Commendation
MPV contrasts high ambition with lowly materials, as though cobbled together in a back garden with one eye firmly on a low budget, and the other on the heavens. Deliberately ambiguous, this contraption to an unknown end stands in a small way for all our technology: from toaster to submarine. This device is in some regards a folly to the machine age and our aspirations, a kind of ‘get me out of here’, a reaching from all that is everyday towards the divine, and a sense that all our tools are steps upon the ladder, which we climb.
Biography
David studied at Portsmouth Art College (1979-82), Fine Art at Chichester University (2003-06), and The Princes Drawing School (2006-07) with a scholarship on their postgraduate diploma ‘The Drawing Year’. He has exhibited in the UK and The Netherlands and has numerous drawings in private collections. He is an avid sketchbook keeper, fascinated by drawing as a response to the natural world, and tool of the imagination, or device for dreaming. Occasionally, imagined contraptions are realised in the round. These normally use drawing in some way as part of the narrative.
Dawn van Gerven • Spanish Dancers • Judges Special Commendation
I work with construction. Installations made from individual components creating a bigger picture. Play is important, the effect of the surrounding, sculptural placement and context, having profound results on the works power. Researching this subject with what seem small insignificant objects, transforming their role. I am interested in the energy of materials and the relationship between them.
This piece, especially designed for Broomhill, is inspired by sea slugs commonly referred to as Spanish Dancers, from the Nudibranch family. Nudibranch is neo Greek/Latin for naked gills, increasing the body surface, enhancing breathing and represented through the hundreds of discs on the body architecture.
I want to highlight interaction through the sensation of movement. Taking what seems insignificant, (like a slug) and replacing it as a powerful presence, transforming the role in existence. This role is a self contained component of a larger entity. The relationship between big and small becomes more important than what we ‘think’ we fully understand.
Biography
I am a Masters of fine art student at the University of Wolverhampton where I also gained a degree in Sculptural ceramics. I am inspired by energy, character and humour, philosophy and nature. I have exhibited at the new Sidcot Arts centre, Somserset, the British Museum, London, the new Wedgwood museum Stoke and Vallauris, France. Some of my smaller work is in the new book ‘Ceramic Jewellery’. I am planning my next large scale sculptural piece and look forward to it’s fruition.
dawnvangerven.blogspot.com
Doug Burton • Soothsayer
‘Soothsayer’ continues my exploration of a dynamic history that exists in a state of flux and can be accessed laterally slicing a way through the exploded façade. The sculptures form is influenced by the appropriation of images of natural disasters gathered from news sources, which are montaged into the form of a mask and in turn this acts as the starting point for the work. The sculpture absorbs found materials from the area that it arrives in, picking up stones from a local beach and gathering ash from a camp fire all interwoven within the resin medium.
‘Soothsayer’ appears incongruous to the environment that it is located in, revealing a primordial state as well as a future vision.
Biography
Doug Burton studied Sculpture at Winchester School of Art in 1998 and completed his postgraduate studies at the Royal Academy Schools in 2002. Selected current and recent shows include: ‘Continuum’, Soloshow at the Schwartz Gallery, London, 2010; ‘Galileo, Galileo’, Arts Council and Royal Astronomical Society Funded Group Show, London, 2009; ‘Morphology’, Two person show with Nicky Hirst, Royal Academy Schools Gallery, London, UK. He is a tutor at Byam Shaw School of Art.
Glynn Griffiths • EarthSeed #1001 • WINNER 2010
My work is about the considering of materials that are seemingly at odds with each other:
- Between the organic and the inorganic
- Between the Natural and the Man-made
I want you to touch this sculpture; stroke the hard, spiny nylon hairs then gently rub the smoothed Cotswold stone ‘seed’. The two sensations are quite different. They reflect two camps perceived to be philosophically and practically exclusive of each other. I deliberately juxtapose materials in which their enforced coexistence constitutes a reference for an understanding for a more mediated approach to their wider usage. My thinking is that they should have an interpretation beyond the initial presumption of their incompatibility where none of the materials are presumed to be of lesser or greater significance than the other.
Biography
For 30 or more years I worked as a photojournalist supplying amongst others; newspapers, magazines, design companies and charities. After successfully submitting a sculpture for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition I was encouraged to formally study sculpture. In Oct 2009 I completed my MA FA Sculpture at Wimbledon College of Art. I was awarded the Clifford Chance sculpture prize 2010. I have exhibited in De Oude Kerk, Holland; Cannizaro Park, Wimbledon; Meantime, Cheltenham.
Rob Johnsey • Organic form for a garden
In this project I tried to express my fascination with natural forms. Exotic fruits, shells, fossils, the human form and the landscape itself appeal to my visual and tactile senses. My work is really about expressing my feelings for such things in a mostly visual way. I think of sculpture as a way of experimenting with the three-dimensional world. I like to find out what happens if…? At the same time I think of it as a way to explore the human mind. What is it capable of imagining? What can it produce that has never been produced before? My interest in pattern and geometry is always bubbling under the surface.
Biography
My first degree was in Civil Engineering but I spent most of my career as a primary school teacher and finally in the Education Department at Warwick University. I have lived and worked in Swindon, Birmingham, Sierra Leone, Jamaica, The Forest of Dean, Redditch and The Maldives. Recently I have studied traditional boatbuilding and Fine Art in Falmouth where I now live.
Sally Underwood • The House that became part of Itself
Sculpture outdoors presents me with something of a challenge: I find myself wondering whether the site would be better left empty. When nature is doing its job of occupying a space it seems that it could easily make a fool of one who assumed they can better it, yet we have an impetus to occupy and control space and we need to construct shelters for ourselves. Shortly after arriving at Broomhill the word ‘fecund’ came into my mind and lodged itself there for the duration of the installation. As the issues of hubris and fecundity jostled in my mind with the desire to create a shelter in the woods, my solution was to half occupy the space and allow nature to join the party, so I left the igloo frame open and vulnerable to its environment.
The final piece suggests a thwarted or abandoned project to make the camp in the woods, but occupies the space subtly so that at some angles it becomes almost invisible.
Biography
Sally Underwood has exhibited her work at Gagosian Gallery and Sadler’s Wells in London and currently lives in Berlin. She took a convoluted route towards working as an artist, having first completed a degree in economics and worked in that field for several years. Her practice is driven by her delight in the world’s instability and fed by her peripatetic life and most recently by travel experiences in the entropic yet indefatigable Madagascar. She attended Chelsea Collage of Art and Design and the Royal Academy Schools.
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