Richard Slee

Description

The irony of making a sculpture based on cold frames - boxes for growing seedlings and tender plants which are found in vegetable gardens - and placing it on a formal lawn is just one aspect of subject-matter broader than that previously addressed by Richard Slee in this work. Like many sculptures, this appears to be about an everyday object, but it is also about materials and processes which simultaneously become part of the subject.

Cold frames are usually made of brick or wood, low lying and with glazed lids to admit light. Here Slee has played with scale, and the fine brickwork is turned on end, which allows him to use what in reality would have been a horizontal plane - a divided glass surface - as a canvas. Glazed tiles represent panes of glass, and are printed with images of plants. Slee has used a photographic technique for this, which gives the sculpture an undeniable graphic quality: a reference to the seed packet, perhaps? These panels are like chequered canvases leaning against the studio wall.

Known for his robustly modelled earthenware, Slee has allowed himself the familiar luxury of producing curling tendrils of weeds that appear to grow from the foot of the cold frames' walls, and which acknowledge his early bud-like forms and floral pieces. Cold Frames is also about contrasts: formal, pristine brick against free modelling; its rough texture against the smooth glazed panels; and print against the mark of the artist's hand. This work confirms Slee as a redoubtable colourist. The printed imagery, slightly subdued as if seen through glass, the bright new shoots and red brick all combine and contrast in a work that at first appears to be a fairly naturalistic sculpture, but which on further examination yields much more.