Bridget McCrum ££ - £££
Bridget McCrum was born in 1934 and lives and works in Devon and Gozo in Malta. She studied at Farnham College of Art, training as a painter with Lesjek Musjynski, in the 1950s. She came to sculpture in her forties and from 1980 began to work primarily in stone, having learned her craft from John Joekes and Andrea Schulewitz on the South Downs.
Since childhood Bridget has been excited by ancient remains, fragments of carving and standing stones in lonely landscapes. Her travels have taken her to many sites from different cultures around the Mediterranean, and the chance to work on archaeological surveys in Somalia during the early eighties increased her interest in small objects from the past.
Her work is included in many international collections including: Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, Rolls Royce Aero Engines, Bristol, Lismore Castle, Co Cork, HSBC, Malta, Spencer Stuart, London, and the Golden Door Foundation, San Diego. Her work is held in private collections in the USA, Canada, the Middle and Far East, Europe and the UK.
Anthony Gormley ££££
Antony Gormley is widely acclaimed for his sculptures, installations and public artworks that investigate the relationship of the human body to space. His work has developed the potential opened up by sculpture since the 1960s through a critical engagement with both his own body and those of others in a way that confronts fundamental questions of where human beings stand in relation to nature and the cosmos. Gormley continually tries to identify the space of art as a place of becoming in which new behaviours, thoughts and feelings can arise.
William Peers £/££
William Peers was born in 1965 and studied at Falmouth Art College after which he was apprenticed to a stone-carver, Michael Black, from 1989-1991.
His earliest carvings were figurative and followed that long history of English stone carving brought to prominence in the 20th Century by Henry Moore and Eric Gill. Gradually Peers’s work became more and more abstract.
Many of his carvings hang on the wall, rather than being free-standing. This lends a greater emphasis to the surface of the stone and to the delicate chisel-work than to the overall shape. Many of the sculptures are hand-carved, their surface accentuated by the tiny rhythmic patterns of the chisel and the occasional holes and slender rivulets that puncture the stone.
Peers’s carvings have as much affinity with painting as sculpture. The work lies somewhere between the two, with as much in common with abstract painters, Paul Klee and Barnet Newman as with Moore and Gill. Peers lives and works in North Cornwall.
Tom Stogdon ££
Tom Stogdon is an artist born in 1964 into a fourth generation of greengrocers in Bloomsbury. He withdrew from the fruit trade in 1998 and has never looked back. ‘I often wonder how life would have been if I had gone on to art school instead of the market but always arrive back at the same conclusion… who really knows. What I do know is that I feel very lucky to be doing what I love every day.’
Over the years he has worked with a number of inspiring and talented people some of whom are good friends today. He works in stone, wood, metals and paper and takes his inspiration from many different avenues. The building process either starts by adding something to an object or taking part of it away and is serendipitous, with one piece of work informing the next. Sometimes it is a journey of several years before he returns back to the original kernel of an idea.
Tom was elected as a member to the Royal Sculpture Society in 2012 and is married to Rebecca. They have two fantastic young boys of 6 & 8 who keep them both busy and very entertained, so not so different to everyone else really. His studios are now very rural and just outside Oxford, but London will always be part of him and therefore, to some degree or other, in his work.
Louise Plant £/££
Fascinated by movement, Louise Plant creates sculpture which explores light, form and space. In her most recent work, The Nudibranx series, Louise takes inspiration from natural forms created underwater, capturing the undulating movement of organic matter. Additionally, in developing the Parkour series, Louise has begun to make this strong urban inspired work in marble, highlighting the material’s capacity to infuse light drawn from a dense city skyline.
Louise studied sculpture with the Open College of Arts in 1992 and later at Doncaster Art College. Her studies continued at Wysing Arts, Cambridge, at Global Stone Workshops, Carrara, at Fondazione Sem, Pietrasanta and as a mentee of Helaine Blumenfeld, OBE.
Commissioners include the RNIB, MOD, Waldorf Astoria, and Durham County Council. Her work is sited in England, Scotland, India, Thailand and Italy and is held in private collections throughout the world.
Erika Anfinsen ££
Erika Anfinsen uses stone to create playful and energetic silhouettes. Using minimalistic designs, she introduces a remarkable lightness to her carvings. In pieces such as her sofa and pillows, the stone appears to be soft and textured, giving the impression of delicate pieces of furniture. Here, the perfectly finished surfaces capture the folds and creases that would be found within the fabric; indentations perhaps left from the last sitter. She masters the stone, creating works that can be relished, used and enjoyed rather than just viewed. By effectively capturing the beauty of the everyday, Erika reimagines space by bringing the inside outside.
Erika was born in Germany but now resides in Bergen. She divides her work between Bergen and Pietrasanta, where she sculpts in marble. She has been carving marble for 11 years, and has had numerous exhibitions at home and internationally, with several exhibitions this year in Norway and Pietrasanta. She has also made major artistic contributions to public spaces, including those in Germany, Italy, Austria and Norway.
