PRESS RELEASE
WILLIAM PEERS: States of Flow
Oct 12 – Oct 28, 2023
Everard Read Cape Town is pleased to present a new body of work by British sculptor William Peers.
Peers’s sculptures are both sensual and sinuous. The artist makes his home and open-air studio in rural Cornwall, surrounded by nature and organic forms, all of which informs his lexicon of marble curves. In describing his latest work, Peers comments: "Throughout this series of looping and flowing sculptures, the eye is led around the form until it comes to rest once more where it started."
These works are a celebration of form and shape, and their airy playfulness belies the intensive labour, the shaping and refining that gives them their silken sheen and impossibly smooth curves. Sometimes the trajectory has the feel of an eccentric orbit in space that gives little concession to gravity and earthly physics. "Cassini, Riccioli and Fermion," Peers says of the new pieces, "hardly seem to be made of solid marble at all."
"The simplest loops seen in Ennis and Tarne," Peers remarks, "are playing with the conceit that thinner sections might be affected by gravity. This becomes a sort of visual haiku for me, where the perfect balance is sought but remains forever elusive."
"In Melvi and Atol," he continues, "the thinner sections seem inclined to twist and give the sculptures a figurative aspect. Whereas Moro, Metherel, Moy and Don repeat a form around a circle. Theirs twists, or pebble forms, animating the marble and framing what might lie behind."
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Installation and art work images by Michael Hall
WILLIAM PEERS
(b. 1965, UK)
William Peers studied at Falmouth Art College, after which he was apprenticed to a stone-carver, Michael Black, who urged him to work slowly and entirely by hand. Peers worked in the marble quarries of Carrara, Italy, and later spent time in Corsica, where he found a tranquil retreat to work and develop his ideas. His earliest carvings were figurative and followed the long history of English stone carving brought to prominence by Henry Moore and Eric Gill.
In the 1990s Peers moved to Cornwall, and there followed a period of fifteen years where he exclusively carved relief sculptures in Hornton Stone. Over time, his work has become increasingly abstract. In 2007 he created a large series of work in Portuguese marble. The change of material had a dramatic effect on the style of his work. In 2010 he embarked on a series: 100 Days: Sketched in Marble in which he carved a marble sculpture each day for one hundred days. Working repeatedly within a time limit led him to a bolder approach to carving. Recently, the relationship between positive and negative shapes has become an interest, and several larger works for the landscape have seen a dramatic change in scale in his work. Two of his monumental sculptures are permanently displayed at Linthwaite House in Britain’s Lake District as part of the Leeu Hotel Group’s collection.
Peers’s sculptures are both sensual and sinuous. The artist makes his home and open-air studio in rural Cornwall, surrounded by nature and organic forms, all of which informs his lexicon of curves. These works are a celebration of form and shape, and their airy playfulness belies the intensive labour; the shaping and refining that gives them their silken sheen and impossibly smooth curves.
Peers’s practice involves self-imposed constraints, working within these boundaries and exploring the forms that emerge. In recent years he has been investigating the movement of a line travelling in space like an air current, weightless and uninhibited. The result has been a series of sculptures with continuous loops, each one the journey of a slight volume through space. Peers’s collection of new sculptures are recognisable siblings which explore the possibilities of working on a smaller scale - and the delicate forms that materialise.
The artist explains further, "Bringing the scale right down changes so much. I can make the slender parts really light without fear of breaking the sculpture. In many, I leave the part touching the base heavier, rooting the sculpture. In some of the larger works, the relative constancy of weight around the form is almost a defiance of gravity, or reality; whereas others feel much more anchored.”
EXHIBITIONS
2022 Still Motion, Everard Read, London, UK
2021 Summer 2021, Everard Read, London, UK
2020 Bronze, Steel, Stone & Bone, Everard Read, London, UK
STILL, Everard Read online exhibition, SA & UK
2019 RECENT WORKS, Everard Read, Cape Town, SA
SUMMER, Everard Read, London, UK
Fanfare, Everard Read London, London, UK
2018 A Line in Space, John Martin Gallery, London, UK
2016 The Space Between, CIRCA Everard Read, London, UK
Art 16, John Martin Gallery, London, UK
CIRCA London, London, UK
2014 On form sculpture, Asthall Manor, Oxfordshire, UK
Carvings in Marble, John Martin Gallery, London, UK
2013 On form London, The Crypt, St Pancras Church London, UK
2012 Woburn Artbeat, Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire, UK
Sculptural, Coombe Trenchard, Devon, UK
On Form Sculpture, Asthall Manor, Oxfordshire, UK
Pertaining to Things Natural, John Martin Gallery at Chelsea Physic Garden, London
2011 Glyndebourne Festival, East Sussex, UK
Joze London, London, UK
10 Joze Show, Sussex, UK
2010 10 Joze Show, Sussex, UK
On form sculpture, Asthall Manor, Oxfordshire, UK
100 Days: Sketched in Marble, John Martin Gallery, London, UK
2009 Art London, John Martin Gallery, London, UK
‘09 Joze Show, Sussex, UK
’09 Joze Show, Sussex, UK
Sculpture at Woburn, Sladmore Gallery at Woburn Abbey, UK
2008 On form Sculpture, Asthall Manor, Oxfordshire, UK
The Secret Garden, Solomon Gallery, Dublin, Ireland
2007 New Work in Marble, John Martin Gallery, London, UK
2006 Art London, John Martin Gallery, London, UK
Joint exhibition with Neale Howells, Moncrieff-Bray Gallery, Sussex
2005 Stone Carvings, John Martin Gallery, London, UK
2003 Chelsea Flower Show, London, UK
2002 The Armoury Show, New York, USA
Wall-hung carvings, John Martin Gallery, London, UK
2001 Three Eastern Heads, Art2001, Business Design Centre
2000 Summer Exhibition, John Martin Gallery, London, UK
1998 New Artists 1998, Group Show, John Martin Gallery, London, UK
1997 Group shows, John Martin Gallery, London, UK
1996 Exhibition of carvings, John Martin Gallery, London, UK
1995 One man exhibition of prints & interior form sculptures, Hyde Park Gallery, London
1994 Joint family exhibition, Hereford, UK
1993 Exhibition of carvings, Gigondas, France
1992 Art Week, Oxford, UK
1991 Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London, UK
