TELFER STOKES. embodied. metal objects 2013-2015

About

Austin / Desmond Fine Art presents an exhibition of metal objects by British artist Telfer Stokes (B.1940). Better known for his art books, Stokes began making his metal works around 10 years ago after a chance visit to a scrapyard exposed him to the sight of thousands of discarded, half-formed, cast metal objects. Once useful as industrial or marine machinery, the metallic jetsam of the scrapyard represented an abundance of potential for Stokes; ready forms, colours and textures to peruse, rethink and transform.

In preserving the essence of those found pieces, Stokes manages to maintain a complex tension between the part and the whole; the stuff-of-the-world and the materials of art; the useful and the beautiful. Perhaps the endeavour can be most easily characterised as an attempt at transformation – that seems to be at the heart of what Stokes does.

Born in 1940 in St Ives, Cornwall, Telfer Stokes Studied at the Slade and had a Beckmann Fellowship to do a postgraduate at Brooklyn Museum Art School, New York in 1962. He founded imprint WEPRODUCTIONS (Artist Books) and published 20 books between 1972-2002. In 2008 he started to make Sculptural objects and exhibited in the same year at Kettles Yard Open. He had his first show at North House Gallery in 2010.