I de V

19/06/2026

Six years ago I did one interview for the Royal Society of Sculptors. It has since grown into three programmes and a way of working I enjoy enormously.

In my latest Inside Sculpture post, I write about what conversations with sculptors have taught me about studios, space and the search for financial viability. One of those conversations happened in a studio in central Kyiv, four weeks before Russian forces crossed the border.

I also share a look at Daiga Grantina’s Lilacs at the Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, and an excerpt from my review for Recessed Space

Link in bio.

15/06/2026

A scrapbook of sights and sounds from 3 days in Sopot, to celebrate the opening of Xawery Wolski’s On the Road exhibition at the State Gallery of Art (PGS).
1. The exhibition opened with a performance by Yong Min Cho. Yong Min is a South Korean body language artist based in London. His work has taken him around the world, so it felt particularly fitting to see him here at the launch of a show that focuses on how Wolski’s extensive travels hold the key to a visual language informed by mythologies and making traditions that resonate across cultures and time.
2. Sopot is a resort on the Baltic Sea, and this was my first view of it as I arrived at my hotel room after an early flight from Stansted, all hot and bothered from a day of stuffy trains, planes and taxis. The breeze was gentle and clean, and as I walked to the museum along the sea, it was filled with the scent of dog roses in blotchy pink flower.
3 & 4. Views from inside a manor house in the countryside nearby. 
5. One of my favourite pieces by Xawery Wolski in the atrium of PGS.
6. On Saturday night, some of us went to a local Chinese restaurant Pak Choi, where fortune cookies are still a thing! I found my forecast as I riffled through my bag on the Stansted Express home.
7. After dinner, one of our group suggested we go back to his, and were treated to the most unforgettable evening of music. Professionally, this collector is a psychiatrist as well as a gifted musician, who regularly invites fellow pianists to play with him for his very lucky friends. On entering his drawing room and seeing the Steinway, I exclaimed, only to be pointed to the Sommerfeld upright in the dining room next-door and told that he has a concert piano at his other home. (The Sommerfeld was reserved for a rendition of Krzysztof Komeda’s theme for Rosemary’s Baby). His generosity and passion for music were extraordinary, and wouldn’t you say  “my other Steinway is a grand” trumps a Ferrari any time?
See comments for rest of caption ⬇️

22/05/2026

My third Inside Sculpture article is out now, and it covers two Fourth Plinth commissions that weren’t included in my book on the programme, and that I was dying to write about. Michael Rakowitz’s The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist and Heather Phillipson’s THE END.

Both works show the Fourth Plinth at its best, as a lightning rod for the debates of our time.

Find it on Inside Sculpture — link in bio. Audio available.

21/05/2026

Clare Burnett is having such a moment right now.

Earlier this month, I attended the launch of her new commission for Timber Square in Bankside. Seedlinks is a permanent work, so make a note to see it when you visit Tate Modern.

Last night, she was in conversation with art historian Sophie Lachowsky at HS Projects at 5 Howick Place about her solo exhibition “Give and Take”, which meditates on ideas of exchange. The title sets up an expectation of parity, but she questions how equal most of the trade-offs we engage in really are. We hand over our freedom and privacy in exchange for convenience or security, for example. She points out that this is not new, with power and money always determining the currency.

Clare’s Secret Sentinels, originally shown in Sculpture in the City, are on display in the gallery garden outside Bo Lee Gallery in Bruton, Somerset, until the end of August.

20/05/2026

The articles are now listenable, starting with Sculpture is the Most Improbable Artform.

Head to the link in bio, or just search Inside Sculpture on Substack.

18/05/2026

“Tyson says he attends lectures, talks to researchers and checks technical details with them to ensure his art-making is allied to scientific accuracy.”

I love that Keith Tyson is giving £250,000 to Oxford to support the university’s Savilian chair in astronomy, thanking its astrophysicists for two decades of collaborative thinking.

Having worked with artists who develop deep relationships with academics and scientists, I’ve seen how transformative these exchanges can be.

Art and science are both speculative activities powered by experimentation and problem-solving. An artist has an idea, tests it, pushes it further, then calls on collaborators to challenge and expand it.

At the end of that process, a work of art comes into being, which couldn’t have existed in its final form without this cycle of action and reaction.

Exhilarating conversations between complementary minds and temperaments that result in something uniquely, idiosyncratically human.

08/05/2026

I hadn’t intended to write about Storytellers at Worcester College Oxford, but the exhibition and its setting proved too compelling to ignore.

At the opening, I spoke with curators Iwona Blazwick and Katie Delamere about the thinking behind this ambitious exhibition unfolding across Worcester’s extraordinary gardens in five acts inspired by Shakespeare.

The conversation was recorded spontaneously on my phone during the opening itself, so this is very much an on-the-ground dispatch rather than a polished film. I wanted to capture something of the atmosphere, immediacy and curatorial thinking surrounding the exhibition as it unfolded in real time.

The exhibition includes works by Reza Aramesh, Leilah Babirye, Anderson Borba, Dorothy Cross, Hazel Dowling, Kira Freije, Elisabeth Frink, Antony Gormley, Jarad Jackson, Oren Pinhassi, Lucia Pizzani, Grace Schwindt, Daniel Silver, Renee So and Francis Upritchard. .schwindt

Photography by Fisher Studios.

My accompanying essay is now live on Inside Sculpture.

Link in bio.

30/04/2026

24/04/2026

I’ve been thinking for some time about how much of what I do in my work never quite makes it into public view.

Not the finished sculptures, but everything around them: how they come into being and how they are shaped.

Inside Sculpture is a new space for that: essays, field notes and conversations drawn from work with artists, exhibitions and public projects.

The first piece begins with a moment a year ago when Saad Qureshi installed Tower of Now in Bradford, and opens out into larger questions about what it really takes for sculpture to exist.

If this is relevant to your work or interests, I’d love you to follow along here: https://bit.ly/4e2ZRIV

17/04/2026

I’m excited to share the third conversation in Material Encounters, an online series for the Royal Society of Sculptors.

Join us on Monday 27 April at 6.30pm, when I’ll be in conversation with RSS Fellows Simon Hitchens and Susan York. Working with elemental materials, from rock and iron to graphite and clay, their practices are grounded in a deep, sustained engagement with the physical world.

In this conversation, we’ll explore art as a process of exploration: how works take shape over time, through very different yet complementary approaches to making. We’ll also trace the quieter forces that underpin their work: the landscapes they are steeped in, from the verdant idyll of Somerset to the dramatic and sober terrain of New Mexico, and how these environments surface in material, form and sensibility.

See my link in bio to register, or visit the Royal Society of Sculptors website.

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