Brooke Benington are delighted to present Two Volcanoes, an exhibition with sculptor Andrew Sabin across two locations. In London there will be a solo exhibition at Brooke Benington and in Chichester, Sabin will exhibit new works alongside his wife Laura Ford who will show a selected group of works from her archive, for a special exhibition curated by the couple to celebrate their current and forthcoming exhibitions.
This exhibition is by appointment only through Brooke Benington or Bo Lee and Workman and comprises a number of new and larger works by Andrew Sabin and historical works by Laura Ford. As Sabin explains:-
Laura and I met at Chelsea on the MA sculpture course in 1982 and we have worked pretty much side by side ever since. We share a common understanding of what sculpture is and what the basic principles are even though, superficially, our work is very different (she is figurative, I am abstract). The creation of The Black Barn has been a long term plan to enable us, almost without impediment, to make any work we like and complete what has already been a 42 year adventure in sculpture making.
The title of the two parts of my exhibition is Two Volcanoes. The image of volcanic cones, joined at the hip, has appeared a number of times over the years. In 2015 I made two works, Latent Form 6 (Conscious Couple) and Latent Form 11 (Mirrored Couple). I have used the same device more recently in the large Two Volcanoes sculpture which features as a central work in our joint exhibition. I think of the two volcanoes as Laura and I, spewing out matter together which comes to earth, solidifying in this form or that (sculpture) and, in the process, becoming ourselves, as a couple, in this form or that. Laura also has made many works on the theme of couples, often with uber volcanic content if not literally of volcanoes (Kali and Cockerel, 2014 and Punch and Judy, 2016).
I love the mutability of volcanoes – here today, gone tomorrow, like this today, like that tomorrow. I like their pent up violence, I like the fluidity of their spew be it gas or rock or lava and I like that this spew will find final form at some point in interaction with the land (or sea). Mostly these days I am working with liquids of various viscosities. My beloved margarine (in which many of the moulds for my pieces are initially sculpted ) is a liquid just stable enough not to flow; its resistance is minimal so it takes marks and makes textures as easily and quickly as if one were drawing in snow. The materials I put into the voids I make are also liquids and like lava they flow and solidify taking the form of their context.
I have a fondness for Philip Pullman's Dark Materials novel series having read them to our children a number of times over the years. I recently came across a very succinct phrase of which has stuck with me: “Spirit is what matter does”. I’ve spent a lifetime working with matter and discovering what it can do. We, of course, are matter, so it has been matter playing with matter looking to find its spirit. The Black Barn, my sculpture, and Laura’s, are moments in that adventure solidifying as expressions of material spirit.
Andrew Sabin
March 2024, West Sussex
