Bruce Gernand, Henry Moore Foundation Fellowship 1992 – 1994

“Part of my experience of these sculptures, and in particular “Hearts-Hide” and “Fold”, is the experience of being held close to a creative effort that is insistently and routinely workman-like. Such work reflects not only a highly practical involvement but a range of interests that arise from a concern with practical matters. My experience of what is practical about the work is the experience of it seeming practical beyond mere practical needs. Being “workman-like” is something I think of here as a kind of care and which in the best tradition of care has come to express itself concretely.”

Peter Venn, from “practical beyond practical need…” in “Bruce Gernand, Henry Moore Foundation Fellowship, 92-94”

“An aspect of foundry practice is that so much of the work is ‘indirect’, the requirement to take an object through numerous stages. . . I saw this period as a challenge to explore ways of extending the many technical procedures into the creative process. At first this took the form of welcoming accidents and features of facture, but subsequently I endeavoured to incorporate the processes in a more integrated fashion. . . There was a sense of a continuous process of liquification and solidification of materials. Mixing and pouring became primary activities – through the agency of containers, from buckets to crucibles.”

From “Bucket and Box”, Bruce Gernand in “Bruce Gernand, Henry Moore Fellow in Sculpture” (see publications).