Hall’s work spans nearly five decades, during which time he has explored the interplay of interior void and exterior surface in his sculpture and drawings and utilized spatial interval, geometric forms and the play of light and shadow. The changing relationships between space and form that occur when walking in landscape is paralleled in his practice, in which both movement and stillness is expressed.
The exhibition will encompass a selection of 14 sculptures of varying materials - polished or painted wood; bronze; steel; aluminium – both wall mounted and free-standing, ranging from intimate to grand-scale.
Accompanying these works are large, lyrical charcoal and gouache drawings, in which the deep, saturated pigments give weight to the lightness of the graceful curvilinear lines. The drawings are impressive in size, but never imposing, achieving a choreographed balance of form and space.
Nigel Hall was born in 1943 in Bristol and studied at The Royal College of Art, London, where he later became a tutor. After graduating he spent 2 years in the US on a Harkness fellowship. He was Head of MA Sculpture at Chelsea School of Art and a faculty member of the British School in Rome.
He is well represented in numerous public collections in the UK and also the USA, Asia, Australia and Europe. These include TATE, London; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Kunsthalle, Zurich and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art. He has also undertaken both private and public large-scale, site-specific commissions internationally. In 2008, Hall had a solo survey show at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield and in the autumn of 2011 he will be exhibiting his seldom-seen notebooks and landscape drawings at the Royal Academy, in their Artists’ Laboratory series, to which he was elected in 2003.
