David Begbie United Kingdom, b. 1955

David Begbie

Born Edinburgh, Scotland, UK in 1955

Internationally renowned sculptor David Begbie began his career as an artist at the age of thirteen. He discovered the properties of his medium as a student in 1977 at the Winchester School of Art and developed the idea as a post-graduate at the Slade School of Sculpture, University College London, emerging with a unique sculptural technique and the beginnings of a new visual language using wire-mesh. In the decades since, he has worked almost exclusively with the human form, primarily sculpting in light-weight steel and bronze wire-mesh but also producing mono-prints, etchings, ink-and-charcoal drawings, mixed-media work, and photographs.

His sculptures are contemporary archetypal images using figurative physical forms made from steel-mesh and stainless steel. Encapsulated within these forms are a series of relationships between male and female, masculinity and femininity, positive and negative, matter and antimatter, light and dark.

Begbie's transparent sculpture is as much about light as it is about substance, the introduction of strategic lighting creates optical compositions of line and form, each transparent sculpture has a greater palpable presence than the space which it occupies. Begbie offers movement whenever there is any shift of light - so much so that these pieces can sometimes have an interactive element as the projected shadow creates an optical fusion of image and object transforming his seemingly inanimate machined industrial material into dynamic three-dimensional figurative and evocative sculptural forms draw into the air.

The majority of Begbie's work is modelled by hand. His sculpture "Palm I" is appropriately a self-portrait, this sculpture is not a truncated form, but rather a delineated palm, existing as a complete form in its own right. The easel in which it is suspended draws reference to the interplay between sculpture and drawing which constitutes his art form and technique.

David Begbie's skill, perception, understanding and imagination are succinctly and economically contained within the confines of the simple shell that constitutes his sculpture.

David Begbie is one of the most influent sculptor in England with solo shows in four continents, works being collected by many museums Galleria Nazionali de Arte Moderna, Roma, Italy;  National Gallery Canberra, Australia; Museum Beelden aan Zee, Holland; National Gallery of Canada; National History Museum, London, UK as well as an extensive list of public and private commissions: Natural History Museum, London, UK; the Faith Dome of the Millennium Dome, Greenwich, UK; Buddha Bar, London, UK; Citibank, London, UK; The Hyatt Carlton, London, UK;  Connaught Hotel, London UK; The Lowry Hotel, Manchester, UK; Hanover Grange, Montego Bay, Jamaïca.