Martin Cody MRSS

I make sculpture that is material and tangible and comes in two flavours.
In one mode, I bring in pre-made components or custom made components to the gallery or site. I think of these fabricated components as my ‘company of actors’, a notion that points in the direction of sculptural forms as performative. I am attracted to accomplished performance in others and terrified of it for myself, although I like to have a go sometimes. Thus my sculpture in this sense is a kind of performative system whereby materials ‘feel ‘or ‘find’ a way into, through and across the space in an ‘enquiring’ way; unfolding in fits and starts as different materials and ways of constructing come into play, more akin to an event than an object. I prefer the viewer to have a low key entanglement with this event-like condition. I do not aim for immersive, spectacular or monumental impact.
Every now and again, I press the ‘pause button’ on this ‘enquiring movement’ to solidify a moment of process; to do ‘close work’ with forms and materials.’ This phase ‘freezes’ the performative process and I constitute more object-like pieces bringing the viewer into a different proximity to the form, materials and scale of a sculpture.
I resumed making sculpture in 2014 after a career as an Art Therapist in the NHS and I am interested in the experiences of 'new older artists' who have returned to practice or indeed have started to make art in a significant way in later life.