Article from Mark Henry

I am a second generation artist, dad was a painter.

My focus on sculpture began in 1975 during my initial 5 years fine art training; when I majored in sculpture at RMIT. There have been a number of returns to further study punctuated by periods teaching art. From 1998 to 2002 I taught sculpture: bronze casting, mould making and life modeling at RMIT.

I always enjoyed life-modeling immensely as I sought to push the boundaries in my search for new and meaningful ways of articulating dynamic form in space with in the confines of naturalism.

For me sculpture ought to be primarily object driven, and that the object ought to as convincingly occupy its spatial surroundings as do all other aspects of the natural world.

Vault 3

My preference has been to model with clay and cast in bronze, although I am equally at home fabricating with most materials. This bronze above "Vault 3" is part of the Hamilton Regional Gallery’s sculpture collection.

I have been mould making and casting for other artists for more than 15 years now. This first began with the purchase of my first furnace in 1987. Since then I have built a foundry, I made everything myself from fabricating the steel frame, roofing and slab pouring; I did hire a brickie and labored with him to keep the costs down. I chose to use Hebel blocks for their thermal and acoustic properties.

This is where I run life modeling classes; in the future I have plans to expand these classes to incorporate a general sculpture course suitable for most levels of accomplishment. These classes would cover the foundations of sculpture, studio practice through providing some set projects with a view to skills acquisition.

I envisage these classes will evolve into ongoing opportunity for those seeking an environment where they can develop as artists in the context of group tutorials as they explore their personal visual language through sculpture.

The foundation for my aesthetic language remains the visual world, and the human condition. For me this is not to say that one ought be about replicating everything precisely how it is seen, while to do so may become an end in itself, it is more often the case that such a labor will inevitably be at the expense of the higher order function of expression. You may have heard it said

"it’s not so much what you do but how you do it".

I enjoy working with representational and abstracted form, for me sculpture is primarily about form and how it is experienced.

This sculpture: "Severance" has its origins in a spontaneous outpouring of expression.

Wax on a very small scale is very versatile the original small sculpture was one that I had continued to revisit over two decades, as it continued to evolve I began to incorporate elements more nautical in origin than that purely of the figure.

This along with the concept of the figure as an earthly vessel continues to hold some interest for me and is perhaps more apparent in other works.

The way I prefer to work, evidences that ultimately the works meaning to me will manifest through the process of its making, as opposed to getting the whole idea in the beginning and trying to force it to become an object that embodies significant meaning.

For me art has its origins in far deeper places that mere cognitive speculation, so I usually start with just a whiff of an idea and then go about discovering its true nature through the making.

"Severance" above is currently at the Toyota Sculpture awards till March 15th.

I enjoy working with students who are willing to extend themselves as they explore not only their expressive language and methods of production but also deeper aspects of the nature of ones potential in the pursuit of excellence.

Creative flow tends to be most productive when one is enjoying a state of playful expressive output. And we establish a growing sense of individual identity in the making, as our unique visual language continues to evolve

Life modeling classes will commence Saturday 20th April please Email me: markhenry@optusnet.com.au if you would like more information.