Artist:
Andrew Revell
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Andrew Revell was born in Gloucestershire in 1967 and currently lives and works in London. Merging Japanese and Western influences, Andrew Revell’s practice extends across sculpture, drawing and printmaking, working with a diversity of materials including metal, welded steel and wood. Revell studied at Farnham School of Art (1986-87) and graduated from Cheltenham Art College in 1989, receiving his first public sculpture commission in his final year.
Comprising angular interlocking forms and rooted in a concern for materials, Revell’s practice combines an interest in Japanese arts and crafts traditions, Anglo-European Modernism as well as a family history of metal work and pattern-making. His welded steel sculptures echo the formalist principles of early Twentieth-Century art movements such as The Bauhaus School and Russian Constructivism and pay particular homage to the work of pioneering German metal sculptor Hans Ulhmann (1900-1975) and the Italian Futurist artist and designer Bruno Munari (1907-1998). Having spent many years travelling in Japan studying traditional metalworking methods, the surfaces of Revell’s work reproduce the Seventeenth-Century oxidation techniques of Nambu Tekki ironware originally developed in the Japanese cities of Morioka and Mizusawa.
Despite its clear debt to tradition, Revell’s practice also emphasises intuition, drawing parallels with musical improvisation and citing the Japanese martial arts strategy of Shu Ha Ri, whereby traditional wisdom is mastered then broken away from in order to transcend the constraints of inherited knowledge. Working through ideas intuitively in series, Revell aims to establish a dialogue between spatial investigation and material experimentation. His Grok series incorporates found objects, which he combines to explore the possibilities of chance and improvisation, whilst the Tekton series explores the myriad sculptural possibilities of a single material. These works are produced sustainably, using the entire material at hand, requiring no additional elements and producing no waste.
Andrew Revell has produced large-scale commissions for major UK public institutions, including the Museum of Science & Industry, Manchester (2003); the Imperial War Museums, London (2002); Sustrans’ National Cycle Network (1996); and Quedgeley Library, Gloucestershire County Council (1990).
Revell’s work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including, Spring Exhibition, NoonPowell Gallery, Notting Hill, London W11, (2021); Affordable Art Fair, Hampstead with NoonPowell, London (2019); Holborn Public Library, London (2018); Gloucester Cathedral, Gloucester (2017); B.A.R Print Open, Willesden, London (2015); SPON! Gallery Zou, Covent Garden, London (2014 solo); PUSH 107 - Marylebone, London (2013) United Artists Menier Gallery, London (2013) Pushing Print, Margate (2012); 18@108 - Royal Society of British Sculptors, London (2010), Engineered, Royal Society of British Sculptors, London (2009); SW1 Gallery, London (2009); Art Space Gallery, King Street, Bristol (1993 solo); as well as ACAVA Studios, London (annually).