CHRISTOPHER KELLY
CHRISTOPHER KELLYOff to the Famous Land (2008)Bronze, 29cm high
'I started collecting books when I was ten years of age. Artists and their work, small white "Dolphin" paperbacks for 9/6 (turning to 50p with decimalisation), were the perfect size for smuggling into the classroom. The mail ordering of Dover Publications immediately brought rarer art into my world and expanded the depth and breadth of my collection.Leafing through the plates of your own copy of Goya's Disasters of War in your own room is an important experience for a youth. I doubt any graphic novel could come close to conveying such raw emotion. For many years, the gathering of books became my way of keeping a diary. I could associate particular events with specific books, emotional development was paralleled by purchases or library loans of relevant publications. Imagine the dilemma of selling for the first time a substantial quantity of your "library" at thirty years of age — it was like having a premature mid-life crisis. I have repeated this cleansing twice more since and think it may have a beneficial outcome, probably akin to the purging affects of the sulphurous waters at Harrogate Spa. Obsession has been my companion in the pursuit of books, their contents, and their creators, some affairs as fresh today as when they were first opened. A.E. Coppard hooked me in my twenties and I spent many an hour scanning shelves for his wonderful writing, on one occasion, spending eight hours in Hay-on-Wye (30 minutes break for beans on toast) to find a first edition of his collection Nixey's Harlequin (1931), identified by the letters "A ........... D" on a rubbed paper label, and then confirmed by the giveaway spangled pattern on the cloth cover. From the short stories of Italo Calvino, the writings of Stephen Jay Gould, and the anthropometry of W.H. Sheldon, to the neoclassical printed books of Flaxman, these "loves" along with all the others are still relevant to my understanding and way of seeing. The physical nature of a book (this applies equally to ephemera), its weight, size, texture and smell, all contribute to the experience of what is contained within, projecting the individual voice of the author, and enhance the enjoyment or experience of their company and conversation. Tatty cloth "come casual" copies of a book can be more rewarding than the formal "you must wear a tie to dinner" leather-bound edition. I need books and related material both for their content and materiality — in some cases it is not always certain which is of greatest importance. What I do know is that when they combine and fit together well, what is created is something to be treasured. There are close comparisons between my work practice and my relationship to books. So long as the relationship does not become oppressive but is managed and frequently refreshed, then it should be constantly full of enquiry, surprise and reward: a mixture of the excitement of the unknown and the reassurance of the predictable. As a consequence, I automatically draw on my personal library of ideas while making art objects, and connections are constantly made and modified — it's a balance between intuition and learning.'
The sculptor Christopher Kelly graduated from the Cardiff Institute of Higher Education's Fine Art degree course with first class honours in 1984, winning the Fine Art Award. Since then he has undertaken a broad range of major sculpture commissions — both public and private — and participated in solo and group exhibitions in the UK and abroad. He has also created sculptures and designs for stage and television productions by Welsh National Opera, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Channel Four Television, and executed commissions for museums including the Etzel National War Museum (Tel Aviv), Woolwich Arsenal (London), and Kalifa Park Museum (Dubai).His public sculpture commissions include 'Tree of Life — Stage 2', larch wood, 1.3m high (North York Moors National Park, Sutton Bank, North Yorkshire, 2011), 'Emlyn Hughes, footballer', bronze figure, bronze base, 3.6m high (Borough of Barrow-in-Furness, 2008), 'Edward I', bronze figure, granite base, 3.7m high (Burgh by Sands, Cumbria, 2007), 'Wheel Number, Royal Marines', bronze figure, granite base, 2.7m high (The Field Gunners Association, Portsmouth, 2006), 'Barrow Engineering, Centenary Sculpture', 4 bronze figures, 3.7m (Borough of Barrow-in-Furness, 2005), 'Hugh McIlmoyle, footballer', bronze figure, bronze base, 2.7m high (Carlisle United Football Club, Carlisle, 2005), 'Centenary Sculpture', 3 bronze figures, stone base 2.7m high (Royal Welsh Show, Builth Wells, Powys, 2004), 'Tree of Life NYM National Park', larch wood, 3m high (North York Moors National Park, North Yorkshire, 1998), 'Charles Byrd, Artist', bronze portrait bust (Cardiff City Council, New Library, Cardiff, 1991), 'Chartists Sculpture', bronze 3-group, multi-figure, 3.6m high (Newport Borough Council, Newport, 1990), and 'Shelley Sculpture Commission', bronze multi-figure bronze base, 1.8m high (Powys Sculpture Trail, Powys, 1988). Amongst his private commissions are 'Jo Mahony, Olympic Hurdler', bronze figure (private collection, Liverpool, 2006), 'Cherub Architectural Sculpture', resin/steel/marble figure (Dylans Bookstore, Swansea, 1995), 'Light, Fast', marble Figure (private collection, Cardiff, 1994), 'Horologe', brass abstract (private collection, Cardiff, 1994), and 'Laura Ashley Memorial Trophy', bronze figure (Bala Lake Sports Association, 1985).
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