Ghosts
The lovely people at the Ropewalk Gallery asked me to make some work for their new garden.... you can see one small end of the building here, but its actually about 200m long - it used to be a rope factory - and the garden space was clearly once part of the building. This idea started me thinking of things whose presence is felt only in their absence. All the forgotten workers in the factory, all the old maritime connections. So I tried to make the pieces for the garden only half there - they have a light presence, and parts of each whole are missing. And I was aware that artworks always have the ghost of their maker floating around somewhere.
I used 25mm steel bar for the main structure of the spheres, and then, with 6mm bar, created a contoured mesh around the structure; this took more than 600metres of bar, all of which were bent by hand.
Particularly with larger work, I seem to have a habit of making things that work best as the viewer moves around them and perspectives change... which is great as far as the work goes but is a little frustrating when you want to take still photos: the details tend to get lost against the background. But I hope you get a decent general impression of how things look... if not - fancy a trip to Humberside? www.the-ropewalk.com

Left: shows a general view from the far end of the garden. In the background you can just see one of the towers of the Humber Bridge.

Right: The first and most whole of the spheres, aligned with the garden and the building

The middle sphere, left, and the final, end, sphere: right