A sculpture by Eric Bainbridge made from ceramic and glass objects acquired by the artist that have been fused together by coloured resin. A figurine of an artisan with gold plated head sits on the top.

Eric Bainbridge is a British sculptor widely considered an influential figure to a younger generation of established British artists. Initially recognised in the 1980s for his object-based works covered in synthetic fur, Bainbridge has evolved an extensive sculptural practice, addressing existential themes on an everyday level through playful assemblages. Constructed out of commonplace objects and inexpensive building materials, his pieces continuously re-contextualise Modernist principles through a reconsideration of the found object, its material qualities and the aesthetic values associated with it. Carefully staged, Bainbridge's assemblages investigate the domestic and the everyday, while reflexively engaging with traditional sculptural concerns.

Artisan is a sculpture made of glass and ceramic found objects, unexpectedly combined and thus transformed by Bainbridge. Sourced from charity shops (“hunting them takes longer than making them,” he notes), the work’s elements are scrutinised; through unlikely combinations and repositionings, they are reconceptualised, challenging the cultural and aesthetic rules and values that once governed them and forcing us to experience them differently. By coating the craftsman figurine’s head in gold leaf, Bainbridge alludes to Joseph Beuys’ performance piece How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (1965) – another artist and artwork self-consciously drawn to surrealism, subversion and outlandish questionings of what constitutes art.

Eric Bainbridge

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