John Gibbons

Description

John Gibbons has said that his sculptures are "to do with the experience of being alive". Certainly, when one first sees Angels V, VI, VII, they create an immediate sensation of life and fast movement. Poised at angles amongst the treetops to accentuate their flight, they circle above the viewer.

Created from twisted stands that tangle together to form beings, these angels resemble planes or bats more than humans. This technique of construction enhances their sense of frantic propulsion, as though they were a blurred photograph or a flash caught in the corner of ones eye. They are set apart from the grounded human world and seem not to look down but to be consumed in their own world. Perhaps, then, these works are to do with the part of life's experience that is unseen, or rarely glimpsed at best. Not the humanised version of angels but the darker realm of paranormal possibility.



Angels V, VI, VII plays with conflicting notions of the real and the unreal, seen and unseen, still and moving, inanimate and alive. It questions our very perception of reality and begs us to raise our eyes from the earth and look at other worlds and possibilities.

In situ, Gibbons' work provides a function; to literally lift our line of sight up into the treetops and to call attention to the nature and view of the world we rarely notice. By using this space to display art the work questions the curatorial dominance of the museum ideology and opens our senses to new possibilities.