The Cut Digital Archive - Laurence Edwards
The Cut Digital Archive is a series of 12 films of artists and their practise and studio. Laurence Edwards is one of the few sculptors who casts his own work, and is fascinated by human anatomy and the metamorphosis of form and matter that governs the lost-wax process. The driving force behind his work is bronze, an alloy that physically and metaphorically illustrates entropy, the natural tendency of any system in time to tend towards disorder and chaos. His sculptures express the raw liquid power of bronze, its versatility, mass and evolution, and the variety of process marks he retains tell the story of how and why each work came to be. Laurence recently installed a 26 foot sculpture at the side of the A12, called Yoxman. As with many of his works, 'in some ways this figure deals with the crossover from a kind of male triumphalism to a more reticent, unsure confused state, battered and freighted by history, this evocation of maleness looks towards the ground, muffled, buckled and scarred, bearing witness to a complicated history evaluating what role is possible in the future'. Edwards’ practice has long been preoccupied by the entwining of man, nature and time and Yoxman embodies that fascination; he is part tree, cove, cliff and figure. Organic matter is built into the casting process; a detritus of leaves, branches, stone and rope. The patina and colouring of the sculpture will, in time, reflect the nearby cliffs. Drawing together the movement of time from the ancient past through the present and looking towards the future. Based in and from Suffolk, he trained at Canterbury College of Art and then at the Royal College of Art, where he studied bronze casting and sculpture with Sir Antony Caro. After winning a Henry Moore Bursary, the Angeloni Prize for Bronze Casting and an Intach Travelling Scholarship, he studied traditional casting techniques in India and Nepal, an experience that not only influenced his treatment of form and technique, but also gave him the necessary tools to establish his own atelier.
The Cut Digital Archive is a series of 12 films of artists and their practise and studio. Laurence Edwards is one of the few sculptors who casts his own work, and is fascinated by human anatomy and the metamorphosis of form and matter that governs the lost-wax process. The driving force behind his work is bronze, an alloy that physically and metaphorically illustrates entropy, the natural tendency of any system in time to tend towards disorder and chaos. His sculptures express the raw liquid power of bronze, its versatility, mass and evolution, and the variety of process marks he retains tell the story of how and why each work came to be. Laurence recently installed a 26 foot sculpture at the side of the A12, called Yoxman. As with many of his works, 'in some ways this figure deals with the crossover from a kind of male triumphalism to a more reticent, unsure confused state, battered and freighted by history, this evocation of maleness looks towards the ground, muffled, buckled and scarred, bearing witness to a complicated history evaluating what role is possible in the future'. Edwards’ practice has long been preoccupied by the entwining of man, nature and time and Yoxman embodies that fascination; he is part tree, cove, cliff and figure. Organic matter is built into the casting process; a detritus of leaves, branches, stone and rope. The patina and colouring of the sculpture will, in time, reflect the nearby cliffs. Drawing together the movement of time from the ancient past through the present and looking towards the future. Based in and from Suffolk, he trained at Canterbury College of Art and then at the Royal College of Art, where he studied bronze casting and sculpture with Sir Antony Caro. After winning a Henry Moore Bursary, the Angeloni Prize for Bronze Casting and an Intach Travelling Scholarship, he studied traditional casting techniques in India and Nepal, an experience that not only influenced his treatment of form and technique, but also gave him the necessary tools to establish his own atelier.