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Iain Hales

London
I am an artist living and working in London. Originally from the west coast of Scotland I moved to London in 2007 for an MFA at Slade School of Art and stayed.
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Concerns over texture, material and colour are central to my sculptural practice. My works are almost entirely produced by hand, with an exacting focus on the quality of execution. Research towards colour came into my work in 2010, leading to an increased interest in painting and the fundamental question ‘what would a painting made by a sculptor look like?’ In my continual attempt to collapse the space between painting and sculpture, I explore the slippage between ‘object’ and ‘image’, three-dimensionality and flatness, form, and surface. I am especially interested in the way our perception of a given colour is influenced by its proximity to other colours and by the material in which that colour resides.

I exploit the semiotic associations of materials and colour to communicate meaning in my work, very often juxtaposing materials typically used in furnishing interiors with more esoteric artists’ materials and am interested in finding unexpected equivalences between these things. 

Beyond these more formal concerns, my work, and the research around it, speaks directly to the history of the photographic reproduction of sculpture. I find the way a flattened, photographic, documentary image becomes a stand-in for the art object itself fascinating.  This is nothing new, it has been happening for as long as photography has existed; however, the accelerating dematerialisation of the means by which these images are made and distributed, makes the subject feel urgent, as we spend ever more time glued to our screens, consuming digital simulacra of the physical world.

 

Spolia Laetus

Torso (Seb)

Koshi Nage

Untitled (Nike Athena)

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Eclipse

Untitled (Uncarved Monument)

Torso

Aphrodite (after De Chirico)

Odalisque

Cornice

Caryatid

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Highlights: 5 - 11 August, 2024

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