17 June – 31 July 2023
PREVIEW: Friday 16 June, 6 – 8pm, free event BOOK HERE
Artworks by Bridget McCrum can be viewed online from Friday 9 June.
Register interest to receive further information and access the Private Viewing Room ahead of time.
“Bridget’s figures, animal and bird sculptures were economically carved, capturing the essential characteristics of their nature or habit, a subject may appear to be soft, although the profile would be sharp as her sense of curve and rhythm – still her hallmarks – tell of form as well as the incongruity to be found in birds or beasts.”
Ann Elliott, author of ‘Touch and Time: The Sculpture and Drawings of Bridget McCrum’
McCrum’s practice is a potent fusion of the ancient with the modern. She works primarily in stone, from which some pieces are also cast in bronze. Initially influenced by archaeological finds and by the work of Brancusi, Hepworth and Moore, her sculpture also contains oblique references to the landscape and fauna around her homes in Devon and Gozo. The basis of her work is a lyrical abstraction of living forms, a process after which only the primary elements of her animals and birds remain identifiable.
This exhibition offers a retrospective view of the past three decades of Bridget McCrum’s practice with sculpture and drawings on display dating from 1995 through to new work, shown for the first time. It will include the opportunity to see early works which have not previously been exhibited. The exhibition shows the progression in McCrum’s approach towards increased lyrical abstraction, a reduction of means to the essence of her subject. The complementary relationship between McCrum’s sculpture and drawing practice is explored in the two components of the exhibition.
McCrum was born in 1934 and trained as a painter with Lesjek Musjynski at Farnham School of Art in the 1950s. From 1980 she began to work primarily in stone, having learned her craft from John Joekes and Andrea Schulewitz on the South Downs. McCrum’s work is included in many international collections including: Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, Rolls Royce Aero Engines, Bristol, Lismore Castle, Co Cork, HSBC, Malta, Spencer Stuart, London, and the Golden Door Foundation, San Diego. Her work is held in private collections in the USA, Canada, the Middle and Far East, Europe and the UK.