Telfer Stokes - Mode, 2018
I'd gone to The Redfern Gallery to see another exhibition in their lower gallery but got distracted by these wonderful sculptures, sitting on shelves and floor, mounted on walls and also wrapping themselves around the edges of supporting walls like industrial props or supports. Telfer Stokes is a former painter and maker of artist's books, but these newer works are assemblages in metal, created from an assortment of industrial scrap cast-offs gleaned from scrap yards and given a completely new context as art. The merging of disparate elements in Stokes's work may be consciously or unconsciously influenced by the collages of his mother - artist Margaret Mellis, and her second husband, (Stokes's stepfather), Francis Davison, who created the most lively, rhythmic, collages also displayed at The Redfern Gallery (here). Stokes works with the formal elements of texture, shape and colour with the original, vibrant, often primary colours retained from the former lives and uses of the objects left intact. Much thought and deliberation must go into the creation of these pieces. There must be much trial and error in the collage-like selection of individual elements before the artist is satisfied with the juxtaposition of the diverse constituent metal parts. Only when a combination which satisfies the artistic sensibilities and criteria of Stokes is reached can the end processes of cutting, grinding and welding the finished artwork occur. Looking at certain pieces in the exhibition made me realise the extent of Stokes's awareness of the sense of physical space, and its requirements in how and where his pieces would be displayed. The more complex actually warp space, wrapping themselves around the corners of walls like imposing pieces of architecture. Stokes evokes a strong sense of poetry with the metal, achieving the most graceful, lyrical constructions.
Sweep, 2013
Telfer Stokes - Yonder - Recent Work
until 26th November
The Redfern Gallery
20 Cork Street
London
W1
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