I’m putting my consciousness towards trying to teach people through pictures and sculptures that there’s something better in the world. That’s what the world needs more of.
I used to think that the great thing about sculpture was that, like Stonehenge, it was something that stood against time in an adamantine way, and was an absolute mass in space. Now I try to use the language of architecture to redescribe the body as a place.
I’ve always been concerned with my sculpture. The drawings I do at night at home to relax. And for a long time, I just gave them to friends or my wife and didn’t really show them.
In our own time it has been seen… that simple children, roughly brought up in the wilderness, have begun to draw by themselves, impelled by their own natural genius, instructed solely by the example of these beautiful paintings and sculptures of Nature.
Monarchs, aristocrats, and other powerful and wealthy individuals have usually been happy to have themselves and their possessions and families immortalised in oil paintings and sculpture. But before the 20th century, such dynasts rarely commissioned artworks that set out to represent society as a whole.
I have no conceit as a writer; in fact, I find it very difficult to start writing about sculpture generally & my aims in particular.
I am finally getting the chance to build large structures and break preconceptions that my designs are just sculptures for people to be in. But my work always comes down to the human scale.
I really became convinced I wanted to tell the story of the real-life model for the Degas sculpture ‘Little Dancer Aged 14,’ which was unveiled in 1881, the Belle Epoque.
I created a successful outdoor youth festival – the Liverd festival – against all good advice. It was a great way to explore and investigate social sculptures. Having that as my kind of studio, outside of a museum or precious white-cube gallery, that was a kind of education.
People always say that my work is sensational or shocking but there are truly shocking things you could do, and my sculptures don’t go anywhere near that.
In my extensive experience, I can honestly say that Sculpture Hospitality’s inventory solutions are world class and, by far, the most comprehensive in the industry.
Some psychiatrist told me I was interested in sculpture because I dealt in flat surfaces and needed something with dimension.
The first piece I ever collected was a Roy Lichtenstein: a sculpture called ‘Surrealist Head II’. There was a waiting list. I remember Steve Martin wanted one, and I wanted one. I got the ‘Surrealist Head’, and I was thrilled.
Parks are works of art just as a painting or sculpture is.
The paintings to me are always canvas; sculpture has always been metal, though I have made sculpture in wood, also.
The Bauhaus strives to bring together all creative effort into one whole, to reunify all the disciplines of practical art – sculpture, painting, handicrafts, and crafts – as inseparable components of a new architecture.
When a finished work of 20th century sculpture is placed in an 18th century garden, it is absorbed by the ideal representation of the past, thus reinforcing political and social values that are no longer with us.
From playwrights I had never heard of and performance forms I had never seen to sculpture and painting, I gained immense experience as an actor in National School of Drama (NSD). I discovered what discipline and good taste in the theatre means.
I’m quite sure that all true professional artists, of every description, in all walks of life, whether their craft is painting, music, sculpture, medicine or anything, have one primary concern – mankind.
I left Kurdistan in April 2003 with the peshmerga, following their excited advance as Saddam’s forces crumbled. First Kirkuk, then Mosul – where looters broke into the city museum and seized its Parthian sculptures – then Tikrit. I reported from Baghdad in month-long stints until the end of 2004.
