Giles Kent

19 September - 25 October 2003

Giles Kent creates in situ installations that enhance and elaborate on the natural properties of wood, exploring the premis that the visual qualities of nature lie in its simplicity and repetition. Kent's work compliments the natural landscape by responding to lines and shapes found around each particular site, as he has, until recently, worked mainly to commission for outdoor sculptures in the UK, Sweden and Canada

For this exhibition, using large sections of 'found' wood, Kent's concern is to work with the natural growth and movement inherent in the material and is influenced by the shapes suggested by the individual blocks. Kent's new sculptures tend towards an indulgence in purity of form for forms sake; yet it is a purity informed by the personality of the material and his experience of the natural landscape, paradoxically presented within the very urban gallery space of Standpoint, thereby separated from the multiple references that the natural landscape presents.

Mark Tanner was a sculptor who trained at St. Martin's College of Art and had been associated with Standpoint since its inception. He worked mainly in steel, and was one of the first artists to show in Standpoint Gallery. He died in 1998 after a long illness. The Mark Tanner Award was established in 2001, on the initiative of a private charitable trust, to keep alive the passion and enthusiasm he had for the making of art.

Standpoint is an arts organisation with charitable status, set up in 1985 to provide studio space, with the gallery opening in 1993.

Link: www.gileskent.co.uk