Biography
Neil Hedger is a British sculptor whose work interrogates the figurative tradition through fragmentation, material disruption, and uneasy humour. Working primarily with the human form, he treats sculpture as a site where existential uncertainty is imposed directly onto matter.
Drawing on the legacy of classical statuary and its claims to permanence and authority, Hedger’s figures resist idealisation. Bodies appear fractured, compressed, or misaligned, undermining the statue’s historical role as a stable vehicle for commemoration. In this way, the work approaches what Hedger describes as a form of existential materialism: an attempt to locate contemporary doubt, otherness, and instability within objects that cannot change, explain themselves, or resolve their own meaning.
Hedger studied sculpture at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee, and later completed an MFA at Goldsmiths, University of London. He was selected for New Contemporaries 2008, awarded the Matt Roberts Salon Award in 2009, and was selected by Nigel Cooke for ArtReview Future Greats in 2011. He lives and works in London.