Rob Johnsey - Broomhill Sculpture Prize

Essentially my idea was to develop a sculpture for a natural setting such as a garden. There was something about using a public space and not having to exhibit formally in an art gallery that appealed to me. There was a precedent for students placing their stuff temporarily in the College gardens so I negotiated a spot:


I took a long time to decide which form to use for my sculpture for the environment. I wanted it to be related in some way to the vegetation at the chosen site. Eventually I chose a form, which I had been exploring in my previous work and wanted to know more about. The form, which was bulbous and fruit-like contained, inside, a more geometric star shape which mirrored the spiky leaves of the Chusan and Dracaena palms in the garden.



At the time Henry Moore had an exhibition at Kew Gardens and I had managed to visit Grisedale Forest sculpture as well as Yorkshire Sculpture Park so it all came together.



A visit to an exhibition of Henry Moore’s sculptures at Kew Gardens taught me a number important things:



Scale is important to the chosen setting. Moore’s monumental works were needed to compliment the space in the botanic gardens.



His forms, surfaces and colours all have some kind of organic dimension which I thought was important to a garden setting. (A small, mechanistic bronze by Eduardo Paolozzi looked out of place.)



Finally Moore explored his ideas by making as many as 10 maquettes for every full-size sculpture that was realised.



So I returned to College to start sketching and making maquettes.

There would be an image here but the technololgy has beaten me!

Need to work on this. Besides Barbara says this is all boring...........