PAUL SELWOOD
Most artists - and this is a sad truth - have nothing much more to say after four or five years. But there are rare artists who have consistently developed their ideas for 40, 50, 60 or more years and bring to their work all those years of cumulative, intelligent endeavour. We owe a great debt of gratitude to Jan Fieldsen and Anita Lever, in fact, to the Tin Sheds and all public spaces that bring artists of this rare genre to our easy perusal.
Paul Selwood is such a rare artist. He left art school 44 years ago and has never deviated from his calling as a sculptor. His thinking and experimenting have been unremitting.
Going overseas can be very important in an artist's development. It is often an effective way for artists to 'find themselves': to understand what most motivates them and, perhaps, to discover ways of expressing their motivation. So it was for Paul Selwood. He was not yet 20 years old when - after a year and a half at Art School - he was off overseas. In his passport: 'Occupation - Sculptor'. Few artists in their formative years could have got to know so many internationally influential artists as Paul did. Through an association with the Kasmin Gallery, through positions at the Royal College of Arts and St.Martin's, he became involved with many internationally regarded figures and with a wide spectrum of sculptors.
Incredibly rich fare for a young artist.
What is important is that Paul already had ideas about where his sculpture was heading; this meant he was open to all ideas without becoming seduced into a particular 'school', or dominated by a particular artist. Everything was grist to his sculpture-obsessed mill!
He knew where he was heading. In his work can be seen the continuous exploration of an underlying belief about what is the proper nature of sculpture. Later, he was to put his underlying belief into words:
"Not just the formal association of parts - it's not enough. There needs to be a sense of place and time that's ancestral and transcendental."
Though Paul benefitted from association with those important artists it is probable that more deeply influential was his irresistible attraction to churches, cathedrals, mosques and temples. For these buildings powerfully express 'a sense of place and time that is ancestral and transcendental'. So ancient; so implacably commanding; so redolent of an inexpressible reality beyond appearances. The creations of people who steadfastly believed in something transcendental. The awe and wonder they generate is, of course, to be found in Stonehenge, the Sphinx, Ankor Watt, Aboriginal sacred sites, statues from ancient cultures in museums and so on. All suggest a universal pulse, divorced from which sculpture can become, merely in Paul's words 'a formal association of parts.'
This universal pulse, variously expressed, has been the hidden meaning in Paul Selwood's sculpture.
Pertinent to this exhibition, it seems to me, is a sub-branch (if I may use the term) of a recent body of works. Over the last 7 or so years Paul has been making sculptures out of one sheet of metal. A flat sheet is cut, shaped and bent so as to become a sculpture all of itself. Despite the difficulties and limitation one imagines this method of work would involve, the resulting sculptures speak with a consistent voice - that of Paul Selwood. Not being an assemblage of parts, they have an intrinsic unity which gives the works a conceptual and visual integrity: they have an elegance that commands. Amazing is Paul's ability to perceive, hidden in a flat sheet of metal, his sculptural aspirations waiting to be coaxed into three-dimensional life. One thinks of Michelangelo and his blocks of marble.
The sub-branch of this body of work, which I think is especially relevant to this exhibition, appeared in 2004. Sculptures, Paul's most minimal works, were made from thick, heavy steel. The method of construction was as I've just described but very, very much simplified because the heavy, obdurate metal required great heat and force for its shaping. Although not large, their weightiness recalls that gravitas and ageless authority which emanates from ancient religious structures. In their minimalism are instilled not-to-be-questioned transcendental intuitions. (For me, Stonehenge comes to mind).
We have, here, on the walls a body of work that shares much with the sculptures I've just attempted to describe. There is the same simplicity and weighty authority. I think you'll agree that they are immediate and imposing. But there is perplexity here. In the main, the perplexity comes from the fact that they are isolated in space. For in this lies their difference from - as far as I know - all Paul's other work. Indeed, many of his greatest sculptures are involved emphatically with 'place' and 'spirit of place'. In comparison, the works here are un-housed. Consider the wall to which Donald Judd's boxes are affixed; that wall is part of the work, an appropriated part of the work. In the works here, the wall disappears. And, we must bear in mind, being earthbound tends to a sturdy authority: the Sphinx, imagine it, could seem a little ridiculous hovering in the air. Certainly it would provoke a different emotional response.
For all that, for me, and I hope for you, the works in this exhibition don't lose their gravitas, their authority - though not earthbound. Very much the reverse. They are enigmas. There is an indefinable conviction about the placement of these great virtual steel blocks that implies a serious purpose; that implies a profound meaning communicable only by the work itself. There is not the slightest suggestion of levitation. The works exist, there, like irrefutable philosophical, mathematical or religious dicta that live in our minds independent of the phenomenal world. I leave you to the enchantment of these sculptures and to the many questions that these overtly simple statements elicit.
Geoffrey Legge 19th June 2009