Sculptor Russell Bamber comments on his latest work realised using Abet laminates….
From Percy Dalton’s Peanut Factory in Hackney Wick, East London Russell Bamber is making sculptures that flirt with function, frolic with surface and colour and cavort with scale. He hasan eloquence, confidence and originality with form, material and colour that teases, amuses and beguiles.
Simple forms are extruded, distorted and butted to expand the space they occupy and challenge logic.
Each facet collides with the next at perpendicular angles. Size and form are exaggerated and misc construed by colour and reflection. Planes and form interplay and confuse the eye.
Within the complexity of colour the simplicity of form acts as a vehicle; a vehicle that shouts of the hierarchy of sculpture but whispers of the utilitarian function. The viewer is enticed on a journey of questioning, unsure quite which discipline his sculptures occupy. Are they sculpture, painting, design or architecture? “Am I allowed to touch it?”
Russell sees his work as sculptures. Form is primary, colour secondary and function . . . way down the list but crucial to his thinking.
The absurdity of a decision is often his reason for that decision. Russell plunders his environment for detail: Gibberd’s Harlow Civic Centre, the Peanut Factory’s Dutch gable, a baroque balustrade near Barolo, Italy; he sees them as gifts which he re-assigns, re-interprets and enhances.
There could be irony in the sculptures but the craftsmanship oozes care, seduces us and captivates us; his excitement and joy of materials shouts at us.
More information can be found here: russellbamberworks
