Barry Mason

Barry Mason was born in 1952. He studied fine art at the University of Reading (1970-74), the Slade School of Fine Art, University of London (1974-76) and Bath Technical College (1980-81), where he gained the City and Guilds advanced craft award in stone-masonry. He served on the executive committee of the Fountain Society from 1970 to 1974, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors in 1998. Mason has exhibited since 1979. He had a solo show at the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1987 and has featured in many group…

Barry Mason was born in 1952. He studied fine art at the University of Reading (1970-74), the Slade School of Fine Art, University of London (1974-76) and Bath Technical College (1980-81), where he gained the City and Guilds advanced craft award in stone-masonry. He served on the executive committee of the Fountain Society from 1970 to 1974, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors in 1998.

Mason has exhibited since 1979. He had a solo show at the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1987 and has featured in many group exhibitions throughout Britain. He works to commission, making sculptures, some of which include water, with his guiding philosophy being that the idea behind the work is paramount and the methods and materials chosen to express that idea should be the best available. Major commissions include Helios XVI for Peterborough Development Corporation (1987); The Edward Jenner Garden at Gloucester Royal Hospital (1993); Imaeus for Welsh Water, Cardiff (1998); Half Moon for Eton College (1999); and Oculus, which was made while sculptor in residence at Hailes Abbey, Gloucestershire (2000).

Sources for his sculpture have changed and evolved over the years. In the 1970s he pursued an interest in landscape, producing monumental constructions in steel and timber, often incorporating earthworks. Throughout the 1980s he developed ideas derived from sun paths and shadow in pieces that were made mostly in stone. Using the skills he acquired during his City and Guilds training as a mason, he also worked as a carver and conservator. Towards the end of the 1980s Mason began to introduce water as a vital element in his stone sculpture. He gradually incorporated further materials into his repertoire - copper, bronze and stainless steel, which he also used with water. In recent years he has begun to experiment with patterns of holes cut into sheet metal with industrial lasers, giving this work a degree of accuracy beyond the capability of even the most skilled hand. This has led to a series of sculptures in which solidity and mass are challenged by light. The transience of shadows, light passing through water, cultural icons expressed through architecture and art, the conflict of instinct and emotion, the loss of magic and ritual to logic, identifying with mankind's continuing search for finite means to capture infinite concepts - these are the issues which have come to dominate Barry Mason's art.