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Indepth Arts News:
"Edge and Shadow: Nigel Hall Works on Paper, 1975 to 2002"
2002-09-06 until 2002-10-05
Art Space Gallery
London, ,
UK United Kingdom
Nigel Hall is well known internationally for sculpture of extreme
refinement. He is less well known for his drawings and although they are
included in major collections worldwide, there has never been an exhibition
in the UK devoted to them. Selected from work made over the last twenty-five
years or so, this show aims to reveal the evolution of this aspect of his
practise.
Hall refers to his drawings as being " not studies for sculpture but
related explorations, freed from the laws of physics that a sculptor must
obey." and although emphasis shifts with time in their evolution, certain
common concerns infuse the work so that they achieve a tremendous
homogeneity: elegant formal restraint, geometric clarity, linearity,
stillness, spatial interval and an interest in the ways that the mind
follows the eye to imagine volume and space suggested by line and edge. They
are drawings that tease the eye and intrigue the mind with their linear and
volumetric subtleties.
In the early geometric drawings from the mid 70s, charcoal is used layer
upon layer to build up a rich density of black with the pure white of the
paper piercing through. Through the 80s they develop a sparse linear
simplicity and in the 90s hard edged geometric forms, sometimes with blocks
of local colour, are combined with loose areas of charcoal dust. Most
recently the image is made up of a series of diagonal charcoal lines
overlaid, one over the other, until a sufficient density has been built on
top of the illusionary space afforded by the paper.
Also included is a selection of his rarely seen informal landscape drawings
which Hall makes constantly wherever he goes. Recently these landscapes have
focused on Switzerland where he spends time each year walking in the
mountains, and although they stand for very different things to the abstract
drawings, they do offer an insight into his endless curiosity with the world
as he experiences and records it. They are part of the creative research
that informs the main work.
Born in Bristol in 1943, Nigel Hall trained at the West of England College,
Bristol (1960-64), the Royal College of Art (1964-67) and a Harkness
Fellowship to study in the USA (1964-67). His work has been widely exhibited
both in this country and abroad and he has drawings in the permanent
collections of the Tate Gallery, Arts Council of Great Britain, the Victoria
and Albert Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York together with
museums in Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Denmark and Scotland.
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