Abstract sculpture, carved by hand from a piece of Forest of Dean sandstone mounted on a hardwood base

Artist’s links:

www.bernard-mcguigan.format.com

Instagram: bernard.mcguigan

Artist’s biography:

Bernard McGuigan is a sculptor who defies easy definition in terms of sources of influence and inspiration. His affinity with the giants of 20th century European primitivism, Modigliani, Gill & Moore, amongst others, is evident, but his work is indebted equally to the traditions of the more distant past. The spare clarity of Archaic Greek Korai and Kouroi informs his figurative compositions, together with an expressive linearity reminiscent of Romanesque historiated capitals and portals carved by the likes of Gislebertus and the Cabestany Master. His figurative sculptures nod compositionally at the works of the Renaissance sculptor, Tullio Lombardo, while his bold figurative forms invoke exotic models, like the monumental Maoi of Easter Island.

Whether figurative or abstract, McGuigan’s work, is deceptively simple. Viewed contemplatively, the appeal of each piece extends far beyond the material pleasures of sight and touch, offering the discerning viewer a sense of sacred serenity. Fashioned from the most enduring of materials these elemental works will long outlive their current owners and enrich the lives of those fortunate enough to inherit or acquire them in the future.

– July 2020

Dr Sally Dormer 
Medieval Art Historian 
Victoria & Albert Museum.

Above extract is from the recent limited edition artist’s book: “Form Surface & Mark Making: The Sculpture of Bernard McGuigan”

Critical acclaim:

• McGuigan is an outstanding sculptor in stone. – Andrew Graham-Dixon, Art Historian & Broadcaster.

• McGuigan is an unusually talented and gifted sculptor. – Sir Christopher Ondaatje, author, financier and philanthropist.

Selected exhibitions and collections :

Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
Hamptons Designer Show House, New York
Linden Hall, Deal, Kent
Jenna Burlingham  Fine Art
Rye Art Gallery
Bank of India
Forbes Foundation, New York
Aspen Corp, Bermuda
St Thomas’ Hospital, London
King Street Housing Association, Cambridge
Capitol & Provident, London

Selected print media /books:

Irish Times
Evening Standard
House and Garden
Country Life
The Pursuit of Paradise, Harper Collins
Sculptors Bible, A&C Black
Modern British Sculpture, Schiffer Books

Films/TV

Chilli pepper films: “Stories in Stone”

Fuji TV Japan: “Artist’s Homes”

BBC: “Guinness in the Garden”

“Three” comes from a period when I was moving away from the exclusive focus of 25 years; Fishing life on the Stade, Hastings.

Bottle Alley has a strange ambience, this half underground passage cum corridor links Hastings to St Leonards: you experience the view of the sea framed as it were, by the regular concrete supports of the promenade above.

~ Laetitia Yhap 2020

Artist’s links:

My Vital Life – Laetitia Yhap at 80 exhibition at Hastings Museum and Art Gallery

Laetitia Yhap on Art UK

Artist’s biography:

Born in 1941 in the Blitz in London to an Austrian mother and a Chinese father.

1958-62 Studied at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts

1962-63 Travelled in Italy for a year on a Leverhulme Scholarship studying Renaissance art & Architecture.

1963-65 Postgraduate Slade School of Fine Art UCL

1968-73 Three Solo exhibitions at Piccadilly Gallery London

1988-89 Major Touring Exhibition ‘The Business of the Beach’: Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, Orion Gallery, Newlyn, Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne, Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth, Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich, Camden Art Centre, London, Hastings Museum and Art Gallery.

1992 Solo Exhibition ‘Elements’, Worthing Museum and Art Gallery

1993 Solo Exhibition ‘Life at the Edge’, Charleston Farmhouse

1994 Solo Exhibition ‘Bound by the Sea’ The Gymnasium, Berwick on Tweed

More recently:

2009 ‘The Catch’ solo exhibition; Memorial Art Gallery, Hastings, with biographical film by Mark French.

2011 Fishing for a Living in Hastings and Newlyn with Vince Bevan, photographer Stephen Lawrence, Gallery University of Greenwich

2013 Fishermen of Hastings Stade De’Longhi Print Room Pallant House

2015 All Hands: A Time Before Steel Boats, Tractors and Mobiles on the Stade 1974-1995

Works in many public collections: Arts Council of Great Britain, British Council, Contemporary Art Society, Government Art Collection, Hastings Museum and Art Gallery, Hove Museum and Art Gallery, New Hall Cambridge, Nuffield Foundation, Rugby Museum, South East Arts Collection, Tate Gallery, Unilever, University College London, Walker Art Gallery Liverpool and in private collections in UK, Switzerland & USA.  

Bryan Kneale’s Wikipedia page

Works by Bryan Kneale on Pangolin London

Bryan Kneale: Five Decades at Pangolin London catalogue

Bryan Kneale’s Biography:

Born in the Isle of Man in 1930, Bryan Kneale attended the Douglas School of Art in 1947 before leaving to attend the Royal Academy Schools in 1948, where he was awarded the prestigious Rome Prize. Travelling Italy extensively he was greatly affected and influenced by his visits to Paestum and Pompeii, as well as by the contemporary work of the futurists and metaphysical painters. Upon his return to London Kneale began using a palette knife as a tool for painting, constructing the work with overlapping strokes and scrapes using oils which he adapted to have a dry matt finish. Kneale’s distinctive paintings gained a strong following and he painted the portraits of Richard Attenborough and Normal Parkinson to name but a few. However, working in this manner soon ceased to interest Kneale and in 1959, his thoughts still on sculpture, he learnt to forge and weld. His solo exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1966 followed.

Kneale’s method of working in metal, welding, cutting and forging on site, is instant and is a direct way of making sculpture – one could liken it to painting in space. For Kneale the sculpture making process is one of self-discovery. His innate fear of repetition means that once a form becomes familiar it is immediately discarded. What has been previously made will inform future new sculpture and will change the development of his work. He says:

“(the point of making sculpture) is to try and discover in some way the meaning of your own life, to clarify in your own mind those capabilities, or abilities, to see things achieve an existence independent of yourself”.

Pendulum derives from a piece of the same name made in 1963 when Kneale was pushing the boundaries of what he could do with welding often using elements of found metal, gas canisters and exploded bomb shells. Despite his use of heavy, seemingly intractable lumps of metal Kneale’s work is elegant and poised. Here an intricate pendulum hangs elegantly from a thin triangular frame, precise and still yet tense with a quiet danger.

Not content with making and exhibiting, Kneale is also curator and teacher. The first abstract sculptor to be elected to the R.A, he very quickly went on to mount ‘British Sculptors’, the seminal exhibition of Modern British Sculpture at the Royal Academy in 1972. An exhibition of the work of twenty-four sculptors working in the UK at the time, it has since been described as the most groundbreaking exhibition of contemporary sculpture held in Britain. He also curated the Jubilee exhibition of British Sculpture in Battersea Park in 1977. Bryan Kneale’s career as a teacher began at the Royal College of Art in 1952, becoming Head of Sculpture in 1985 and Professor of Drawing in 1990.

Kneale has exhibited widely both within the UK and internationally and his work can be found in many prestigious public collections including the Tate Collection; The British Museum; The Natural History Museum, London; The Arts Council of Great Britain; The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Victoria, S. Australia; Museum of Modern Art, Sao Paolo, Brazil and the National Gallery of New Zealand. Pangolin London is pleased to represent Bryan Kneale.