British Contemporary George Triggs exhibition ‘Between Love & Fear’ is showing at TM Lighting Gallery from 4th December – 12th March 2020.
In his solo exhibition, ‘Between Love & Fear’, currently showing at TM Lighting Gallery, British contemporary artist George Triggs (b. 1982) invites viewers to engage with their own subjective response to his works. Forming the centre piece of a collection of ten exceptional artworks, specially lit by TM Lighting, the title piece of this show, ‘Between love and fear’ is Triggs’ most ambitious project to date. Centred around this new piece, this group of works in sculpture, created over a decade, are brought together for the first time at the lighting specialists’ gallery space in London.
These remarkable sculptures, skillfully cast in bronze, alongside works in resin with projections and light, form striking visual representations of complex emotions and introspection, encapsulating states of chaos, control, vulnerability and surrender. From the volatile to the sublime, Triggs’ relatable works invite the onlooker to contemplate the ambiguities of our most human emotions: fear and love.
Here Triggs tells us about the concepts behind his work, and his process.
Education: 2003 – 2005 The Art Academy. 2002 – 2003 BA sculpture at Camberwell College of Arts
The theme of this exhibition tackles complex emotions. Can you tell us about more about the emotions in your work?
“I want to describe in sculpture how we express and experience the world physically outwardly and how it feels inside us. How the vessels that contain us are an extension of the mind and change with experience, that feel and hold the pain, love and trauma we experience. How we interact and effect with others through our physical selves.
Sometimes we find ourselves on the edge, falling uncontrollably through life, punctured by a cannonball sized hole of despair, overwhelmed by emotion, facing the perhaps impossible task of trying to pick up the pieces and put ourselves back together from a pile of shattered fragments.”
Can you tell us about some of the specific themes of the sculptures shown?
“My pieces speak individually but as an artist I’m interested in confronting and exploring emotions which, as a society and in ourselves, we choose to deny or repress. I want to distill them to a point where clarity and truth emerge resulting in works of great depth, beauty and meaning.
How do we view these often-unspoken places in our mind, that hold such vast importance and resonance in all of us? What inner spirit and determination do we access to survive these emotional and physical onslaughts? There are so many elements to being human, I want people to be drawn into the complexity as well as the purity of experience.
A great deal of my mental energy goes into developing ideas and simplifying them to their essence. Trying to express my views to the world, examining myself and society. Analysing, playing, growing and destroying ideas. They have to be extremely strong to survive such wanton destructiveness. When one does survive, I commit myself entirely to the process of creating it without compromise. I live by the notion “if you can think it, you can make it; no surrender; no retreat”.
“ ‘Treeman’, for example, addresses the power of man, the fragility of nature itself; the childlike naivety of humankind and the beauty and permanence of our world; the vulnerability of nature aligned to the vulnerability of man; the wonder at nature at the cost of its destruction; the inherent forms of the tree reflected in the figure. Man’s want and desire for possession juxtaposed against his desire to nurture and care. How naive is his intention, how aware are we of the balance between us and nature, how we are the very same nature? This work allowed me to explore the limits of using bronze as a sculptural material. I am proud to have kept at it and produced a work that some people told me was technically impossible in bronze.”
“‘Hole’ captures the moment just after impact. Despair and loss, grief, shock and sadness. Evident on her face is a disbelief of the size and violence of what has occurred, that someone or something could do that. She tries without success to cover the hole left behind, stumbling forward, legs on the edge of collapse, unable to offer support. The unseen hurt, we feel ourselves and cause to others, realised in the physical.”
Can you tell us more about your process of working in bronze and other materials?
“Spending time in foundries, lots of trial and error and researching, I sought to understand the properties of bronze just so that I could make a specific piece of work realise its original conception. Being in control of every detail of the process is the only way I am comfortable with delivering the meaning and impact of the final sculpture. I feel each stage, from the original idea to finished sculpture can add extra levels, strength and meaning. This can make life frustrating but the art demands it if I am to fully realise it truthfully. The more I know about process and materials, the more ambitious I can be and the freer I am with my ideas.
‘Falling’ best illustrates this ambitious exploration of process and materials. I wanted a figure that was made out of air, totally suspended and contained, falling towards the light illuminated and encapsulated in the moment. I thought about the negative space around us being heavy and substantial. I went about applying the lost wax process, used in bronze, to the process of setting a wax figure in clear resin. I initially used the heat created by the resin to melt the wax but then had to use methods to control the cooling to prevent cracking and discolouration caused by the volume. This created new problems in removing wax. Sanding and polishing became a whole area of challenge. I spent a year getting this process to work in a way I was happy with. I created numerous two-meter clear columns of falling figures, but the distortion and the lack of encapsulation failed to deliver on the realisation of the original concept. It was only when I had this understanding of the optical and material properties of the clear resin did, I realise that the solution was a sphere. Optically, the sphere interacted with the light in the most amazing ways: magnifying and diffracting it; bouncing off the curved surfaces; distorting the perspective of the figure for a fuller impact. Allowing for layers to be added in a way that added rather than detracted, I needed this to bring the concept to fruition, but the process was long and arduous but deeply rewarding.”
“‘Falling’ explores how life is experienced as a descent through space. I examine the way in which we respond to our fall; whether we reach out to others, diverting their path; or whether we become consumed by our own emotional importance. Even though the destination is certain, the control and freewill we have is perhaps underestimated. What we can and cannot change can be lost in our submersion in the moment.”
George Triggs is one of the most promising sculptors in the UK today. In 2007, he was a finalist in the V&A Sculpture Prize and shortlisted in the Threadneedle Prize in 2009, in 2018 he was commissioned to create the Ifton Colliery Commemorative Sculpture. He works today from his workshop studio in Shropshire.
For further details visit www.georgetriggs.com
TM Lighting is pleased to support artists through hosting an annual programme of collaborative exhibitions and providing complimentary exhibition space. Artwork shown in this exhibition is for sale and all proceeds goes direct to the artist.
Exhibitions in the TM Lighting Gallery are lit using TM’s specialist art lighting products, the Gallery G150 LED spotlights. As with TM’s full range of LED luminaires, the G150 uses high CRI 95+ colour rendition LED’s.
For more information about ‘Between Love & Fear’ George Triggs solo exhibition at TM Lighting Gallery Read more