MATERIAL WORLD

There was a time when Sculpture could be defined by just a handful of materials: stone, mostly marble, wood and bronze. Other materials that have only been seen as transitional, might have included clay, wax and plaster and that was the sum of it.

All of that is now changed and almost anything that isn’t ‘painting’ in the field of visual arts is likely to be classified as sculpture and its material diversity is dizzying.

Novelty has always been held in high regard in the arts and finding new means of expression has often involved finding ways to vivify unusual materials. Indeed the materials themselves arrive laden with meaning and context and as such using an ingredient that already holds connotations through context and history can provide a ready-made conceptual relevance to an artwork.

Making in a material suitable for communicating ideas and for emoting feelings is another challenge. Six thousand years ago the technical process of bronze casting super charged entire cultural traditions across the world. Fresh techniques for manipulating even the most familiar materials can help define an artist’s language or even whole genres of work and it is with this in mind that we thought an exploration of this material multiplicity was an exciting theme for a sculpture exhibition.

Although Pangolin started life as a bronze foundry we rapidly found ourselves dealing with a whole plethora of sculptural media and the interactions with other crafts and crafts people has been a fascinating, exciting and rewarding journey.

We hope you will enjoy this wide range of sculpture and the materials chosen by the artists that best express their concepts and feelings.

Rungwe Kingdon

The MATERIAL WORLD exhibition is now on show at Gallery Pangolin until the 12th November.