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Conrad Hicks is set to showcase his solo presentation, Cu, at Southern Guild. The exhibition contemplates the beauty found in Conrad's chosen medium: copper. Through a process of intuitive forging, Hicks creates forms in metal whose primary function is to express the subconscious. The showcase comprises a series of curvilinear sculptures mounted to the wall and standing on plinths, all made entirely of copper.
An unusual choice of metal for the blacksmith, copper, its malleability and lustre imbue it with great expressive potential. Hicks allows the raw material to drive the sculptural process, curving and bending organically. By reverting to a primal, instinctual art-making, similar to that of the Abstract Expressionists, he finds the metal’s form through movement and interaction with it.
The artworks on show here enact this process through the materiality of copper. They are abstract shards, meditative and sensual exercises in the expressive potential of the metal and its physical connection to it.
With their distinctive colourings, shapes and textures, the works in Cu assume various guises. Some enfold like cloaks, others appear to billow out like sea jellies or scuttle like a strange reptile. A ribbon-like tendril unfurls, a bony spine pushes through the surface of another. The human imagination is set free, and so is Hicks’s offering.
The exhibition will run from 11 December 2021 to 4 February 2022.
What do you think?