Exhibition
it's a soft hard world
8 Dec 2007 – 27 Jan 2008
Event times
Thursdays-Sundays 12-6pm
Cost of entry
Free
Address
- 65 North Cross Road
- London
- SE22 9ET
- United Kingdom
Travel Information
- 185, 40, 176, 484, 37, 12, 312
- East Dulwich BR
Event map
Stephen Nelson
About
Stephen Nelson was the ACE Helen Chadwick Fellow in sculpture in 1999. He has exhibited internationally; including at Whitechapel Art Gallery, The Drawing Room and Camden Arts Centre, London and The British School at Rome. He has curated two shows for The British Council in Eritrea and Tanzania. In 2006, he was part of the group show Thy Neighbours' Ox 2 at Space Station Sixty-Five. In 2007 he was featured in the book Life is More Important Than Art edited by Gilane Tawadros."Nelson's sculptural forms are busy, on the verge of frantic, composed of patterned surface over layers of other patterned surface. Their shapes continue to grow, developing into one another, occasionally touching, aimlessly interconnecting themselves to each other and to other features around the room. There is a sense that they might eventually overrun the space, like bindweed creeping through a neighbour's fence twisting around and strangling some of the more cultivated plants. Nelson's artwork does not seem to fit into any straightforward classification, nor does it necessarily dispose itself to subsequent explanation through words, including these words that I am writing now. In many ways its' purpose might be to remain obtuse, to resist any obvious attempt to say what it means besides what it appears to be. And yet there are moments when it seems to cry out for our attention. It is so carefully constructed and delicately poised. Its' gesture, pattern and motion makes us want to understand it, to empathise with it, not through any other description, or alternative statement, but through our own sense of attachment to the artworks' dynamic postulation, its' independent characteristic."
Bernard Walsh is Senior Tutor in the Department of Art, Goldsmiths University of London