Steelworks

Yorkshire Sculpture Park March to December 2020
Upper Space

Photograph of various abstract paper and card contructions by Brian Fell at the YSP

‘Exuding colour and abstract synergy, this beautifully displayed exhibition Steelworks, illustrated another, but related side to Brian Fell. A maturity which embraces many experiences from within and without the studio, and as Judith Le Grove has said, provides an object lesson in making’

Peter Murray CBE

Founder and Executive Director

Yorkshire Sculpture Park

This exhibition brings together a series of new abstract works by Brian Fell. He is best known for his landmark figurative sculpture. Major commissions include Skyhooks in Manchester, the Merchant Seaman’s Memorial in Cardiff Bay and YSP’s HaHa Bridge. However, alongside his large-scale public art he has been making abstract compositions for over forty years. This show presents this largely unknown aspect of his work for the first time. A lifetime of working with steel and wrestling with aesthetics comes together in these complex but elegant constructions.

Brian Fell with plasma torch cutting metal photograph

Born in Liverpool in 1952, Fell grew up near the docks and was fascinated by the scale and structure of this industrial environment. He continues to draw on this imagery in his abstract work. In the last few years he has begun to use colour and often develops his ideas through paper collages and constructions. He moves easily between abstraction and figuration, believing that each informs the other.

In the late 1970s Fell studied Fine art at Manchester polytechnic, where he became inspired by the sculpture of his tutor Michael Lyons and the work of other artists who has pioneered working in steel, such as Anthony Caro and David Smith. As a young sculptor, Fell was awarded as Artist in Industry Fellowship at Hadfield’s Steelworks in Sheffield, where he was surrounded by the drama and spectacle of production.

Mechanical and nautical engineering have continued to inform and enrich his work. The artist has developed remarkable technical ability and practical skill borne out of a familiarity with and love for steel. Unlike traditional blacksmithing techniques of heating the metal, Fell creates his sculpture using cold forging, a method of shaping the material by hand using hammers, levers and vices. The physical, hands-on making process is an important part of the artist’s practice.

Fell’s longstanding relationship with the YSP began when he was a student. In 1990 he was awarded a Henry Moore Fellowship here. Throughout his career he has continued to generously share his knowledge and skills with many visiting artists at YSP, where he currently has a studio. Since 2011, George Fell, Brian’s son has worked in partnership with him on major commissions.

Professionals photographs of the work are on the website. These shots have been crowd sourced, if you have photographs from the show do not hesitate to send them to us.

Review

In the early summer of 1998 Brian Fell and I were taking a break from siting Phillip King’s major exhibition of sculpture at Forte de Belvedere. From this impenetrable fortress we were surveying the Renaissance backdrop of Florence. Brought up near the Docklands of Liverpool and long student days spent in Manchester, the machinery and architecture of the Industrial North West has had a strong influence on the sculpture of Brian Fell; so it was fascinating to hear him talk about Giotto’s Tower, the engineered aesthetic of Brunelleschi’s Duomo and other architectural gems which contributed to the magnificent skyline of Florence.

A master craftsperson, a leader in his field, possessing great skill and talent, he has spent over three decades studying and understanding the nature of metal, his sculptural sensibilities have helped refine ways of manipulating this stubborn material into an impressive body of sculpture, often on a large and physically demanding scale and at other times a more intimate, gentle scale. There is, however, another aspect to his working life which has influenced his artistic development and, in my opinion, should not be underestimated.

Brian Fell first came to YSP as a student with his tutor, the sculptor Michael Lyons (1943-2019) to assist with the installation of exhibitions. In the early days, improvisation was the name of the game and Brian’s engineering instincts and sense of gravity were crucial in finding ways to move, lift and site sculptures with basic equipment. Over the years he worked on numerous exhibitions, helping to install sculptures formed from a diverse range of materials. Apart from Florence, he also travelled with the YSP team to work in other venues such as the Bourdelle Museum and Zadkine Museum in Paris. The opportunity to study and handle sculptures through installation, from the dynamic bronzes of Rodin to the kinetic sculpture of George Rickey, helped to further expand Brian’s understanding of art and contributed to the evolution of his artistic development.

Metal has always been his preferred material. Apart from his own intense studio practice he has studied the works of Julio González, Anthony Caro, Michael Lyons, Mark di Suvero, David Smith and the great Basque artist, Eduardo Chillida. Unlike Chillida however, Brian Fell’s work is cold forged.

For over 30 years Brian has cajoled, battered, cut, beaten and formed metal into an astonishing range of sculpture, including monumental public works, such as the Merchant Seaman’s Memorial in Cardiff and the HaHa Bridge, sited at YSP, which emphasises Fell’s sense of location and eye for detail. This beautiful functional work acts as a physical and philosophical link between the past and present Bretton landscape as it elegantly traverses the historical HaHa.

A more reflective, relaxed approach can be sensed in a recent body of work exhibited for the Upper Space Gallery at YSP. Exuding colour and abstract synergy, this beautifully displayed exhibition Steelworks, illustrated another, but related side to Brian Fell. A maturity which embraces many experiences from within and without the studio, and as Judith Le Grove has said, ‘provides an object lesson in making’

The pieces are essentially abstract, but in my view also display figurative connotations, adding to the human nature of the work as one explores black, white, grey, silver and splashes of russet, all helping to generate a warm unifying embrace to the work. Sadly, the pernicious pandemic resulting in lockdown during 2020, limited the number of visitors who were able to experience the complex aesthetic and sculptural delights of this exhibition, but rest assured, there is more to come from Brian Fell.

Peter Murray CBE

Founder & Executive Director

Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Review

Brian Fell’s exhibition, Steelworks (Yorkshire Sculpture Park, March – December 2020), is an object lesson in making. Three strongly characterised series, ranged on shelves, plinths, framed or in silhouette, draw the viewer closer to inhabit a world of contrasts. In the first series, terse, wiry forms coil and knot, outlining nodes of black, white, grey and russet. The second series is more solidly architectural, marshalling a vocabulary of circles, arches and lintels: vertical, compact, yet structurally complex. Series three, in refined black and silver, is the most lyrical, showing a playful mastery of form in sculptures that spin and droop, yet remain always perfectly balanced. Further variety is evident in a sequence of steel constructions, in which plates threaded on angular frames glint and catch the light, as well as a set of wire and cardboard maquettes – quirky constructions showing the origins of thought.

Fell grew up fascinated by Liverpool’s docks and industrial architecture, surrounded by the material he would make his own. Studying at Manchester Polytechnic, then receiving an Artist in Industry Fellowship at Hadfield’s Steelworks in Sheffield, he became adept (in the words of his one-time tutor, Michael Lyons) at working ‘ambidextrously’, shifting fluently between figurative commissions and more personal, abstract forms. Steelworks is a virtuosic exposition of the latter. Shaping steel by a technique of cold forging, using hammers, levers and vices, Fell references the history of the material at the same time as expanding its legacy through his own vision. In so doing, he reminds us – in this ephemeral age of the digital, the virtual – of the preciousness of the handmade. These are works that return us to the nub of creativity. Honest and enduring, they delight in the resilience of steel, and, above all, in the artist’s skill and wit to transform it.

Judith LeGrove

Art Historian

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