Jim Unsworth

Jim Unsworth was born in Wigan, Lancashire, in 1958. He studied at Reading University (1976-80). The fine art course at Reading was mostly devoted to painting, although Unsworth began to make sculpture whilst he was there. His father had been a coffin-maker and it was a revelation to Unsworth, with his inherited sense of practicality and of craftsmanship, that you could actually make things and be an artist. On leaving college Unsworth worked in a studio in Greenwich among artists who gained a reputation for making welded steel sculptures. He stayed there for fourteen years…

Jim Unsworth was born in Wigan, Lancashire, in 1958. He studied at Reading University (1976-80). The fine art course at Reading was mostly devoted to painting, although Unsworth began to make sculpture whilst he was there. His father had been a coffin-maker and it was a revelation to Unsworth, with his inherited sense of practicality and of craftsmanship, that you could actually make things and be an artist.

On leaving college Unsworth worked in a studio in Greenwich among artists who gained a reputation for making welded steel sculptures. He stayed there for fourteen years. The professional contact with other artists was important to him through those years, and work from that time was exhibited in Kunst Europa at the Kunstverein in Kirchzarten, Freiburg, part of a nation-wide exhibition of European Artists in Germany in 1991, which was a formative experience for Unsworth.

In 1994 he moved to a studio in Bow with the artists Iain Edwards and Philip Medley. The change of location was mirrored by a significant change in his work, which he contributes partly to time spent carving in Cyprus in 1991 and also to the larger space in which he was working. Large abstract sculptures gave way to figurative works on the theme of the circus. A strong narrative element became important, and the form of the elephant in particular took precedence, not only in large welded steel sculptures but in smaller modelled versions cast in bronze.

Jim Unsworth is reluctant to cite specific influences, but he is very interested in the work of David Smith and of Calder, particularly the latter's circus sculptures.

Unsworth's work can be found in many public collections in Britain. He exhibits frequently in group shows, and has had a significant number of solo exhibitions.