Iain Edwards

Description

An innate respect for craftsmanship and the need to make things well has informed Iain Edwards's sculptural vocabulary. Over the last five or six years he has travelled extensively, and his sculptures carry hints of diverse memories - a New York skyscraper, a tram in Amsterdam, a Roman temple, or southern Indian processional carts, shown several years ago at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. The artist's task was to make sense of his exposure to much visual stimulus, and Edwards brought these things to his work as a way of developing a formal language whilst working within the limitations of wood and steel sheeting used in combination.

In the first of these compositions the wheel form is still largely the subject, but it is pushed towards being something different, a container and a lid. The idea of giving land-based forms the uncertain support of wheels makes light of objects that are intrinsically heavy. Movement is implied, but not possible. These wheels are fixed; the artist remains in control.

Gradually Edwards has introduced colour into his sculptures. He is uneasy about colour, but it works well where he uses it to draw our eye to parts of the sculpture that we may overlook. He also uses colour to define limits, linking a roof with wheels, or to demonstrate other boundaries by showing a way and then blocking it. The colours resonate although they are low-key. Worked into the wood or metal with wire wool, they become part of the base material, particularly when waxed to a luminous satin finish.