"Nothing is finished until it is out of my possession"
I have been making objects of one kind or another since the late 1950’s. I started by collecting objects adjacent to my home – on the beach in Jersey, and frequently assembled or bonded one to another in some way.
In 1966, in a one-man exhibition in Cambridge, I presented my first serious collection of objects from materials that were available to me. I have continued, albeit erratically over the last 40yrs, this in-built habit of finding or saving something that caught my eye and either immediately or later, sometimes much later, attempting to transform it into an object in my own imaginary world. Whatever it becomes, it is as a result of a process that I seem to have little control over. The time scale can be several hours equally it can be many years. However, as long as the ’object’ is in my possession, I am quite likely to ’refresh it’, ’restore it’, or ’rework it’.
During 1967-78 I worked on a private island (Brecqhou in the Channel Islands), creating the largest work I have yet produced, a ’sculptural headland’, in fact it was largely a landscape/gardening/land art piece using indigenous granite. It was entirely sustainable, the local materials were simply, if laboriously excavated and ’re-positioned’; no doubt nature has by now had its own effect on my intervention. I mention this because it was perhaps the longest journey of discovery, of using instinct, trying to work with rather than against nature that I have yet experienced. On reflection, and I guess it is only on occasions like this that one does reflect, there is an inbuilt mental driver of some kind that motivates me to fuss over, rebuild, re-present, - even occasionally destroy, the objects that I create.
So what are these (frequently small) objects about? In essence they combine sometimes familiar materials which aren’t always associated with one another; the surfaces may be camouflaged; sometimes it may be all but impossible to be sure what the materials are. The objects might be surprisingly light or really heavy. They could sometimes be models for something larger.
My objects do require a bit of reflection and consideration. There may also be more than one interpretation of meaning and purpose. From a technical perspective the linking, bonding or finishing often take an inordinate amount of time to get right. Most of the works shown on my web-site are available for sale and I’d be happy to chat about the ’story-line’ of any piece that interests you.
Thank you for your interest.
Allan Bransbury