Nigel Hall
Formal Garden
Following the major Nigel Hall exhibition in 2008, the Formal Garden features a selection of sculpture by this important British artist.
Since the late 1980s, Nigel Hall has created a significant body of work for the open air and has been commissioned to make sculpture for public spaces by institutions around the world. These include the Olympic Park in Seoul and Reflecting Pool for Sapporo Park in Japan, an open air gallery founded by the artist Isamu Noguchi.
The artist’s understanding of how objects may occupy and define spaces informs the way in which he makes sculpture for outdoor spaces. Hall is acutely aware of how an open air context enables a different appreciation of his work to that indoors.
Hall’s sculpture and drawing are often inspired by his experience of walking in a landscape; how views change depending on different approaches and the pauses taken to appreciate being in a place and the effects of season and weather.
Hall translates such experiences into sculptures that interact with their natural and urban contexts. Hall has spoken of setting up a choreography between a piece and its location, with the intention of enticing the viewer to consider the work from many angles and distances, so that the objects closest appear to move more quickly than those in the middle or far distance.
'The sculptures, like landscapes, are best seen in slow motion, interspersed with moments of stillness. There’s the big picture of the sculpture in the landscape and being drawn to the form itself, so it’s the point at which they meet, the detail of one thing terminating and one thing beginning and I’ve always had a sense of the importance of that. I think when you site work it borrows parts of a view and features of its natural or urban environment'.
Further information:
YSP Essential Sculpture Guide entry for Nigel Hall
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