Known primarily for sculptures in wood, steel and bronze, both monumental and domestic in scale, Nigel Hall’s work is concerned with three-dimensional space, mass, line and natural forms.
The artist’s works manifest themselves in organic shapes. Circles and interlinking ellipses are a recurring motif, echoing geometry as much as the landscapes, cityscapes and music that inspired them. Citing evocative memories as influences from the bombed-out Bristol of his childhood to the expanse of the Mojave desert, Hall’s abstract and geometric sculptures change according to light and viewpoint.
They give as much prominence to voids and shadows as to the solidity of the material; the spaces between his sculptures are important to Hall, and integral to the viewer’s experience.
Music plays a large role in Hall’s work, particularly jazz, and he likens the pause between notes to the empty spaces between his sculptures.
“Tangled Up in Blue” is one of his major and defining works featuring a series of interlocking elliptical steel rings painted in blue and black. Denser than other works, it is – in the artist’s words – “like an equation on volume, structure and colour.” Named after Bob Dylan’s opening song on the seminal 1975 album, ‘Blood on the Tracks’, as one moves around the sculpture, it appears to move or dance.
Also drawing is key to Nigel Hall’s work. Overlapping ellipses and circles make way for brightly coloured gouache discs or reveal the charcoal sketches on the paper below. These abstract works give as much prominence to voids and shadows as to the solidity of material and each drawing changes with light and viewpoint. The internal empty spaces become forms, framed by their geometric assumptions.
Born 1943 in Bristol, Nigel Hall studied at the West of England College of Art, Bristol from 1960-64 and the Royal College of Art, London form 1964-67. A Harkness fellowship took him to the America from 1967-69 and he has also received the Pollock Krasner Award and the Jack Hill Royal Academy Sculpture Prize. In 2003 he was elected a Royal Academician and has held teaching posts at the Royal College of Art and Chelsea School of Art in London, and the Rome School, Italy.
NIGEL HALL IS REPRESNTED BY ANNELY JUDA GALLERY, LONDON www.annelyjudafineart.co.uk
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