Richard Mackness MRSS

‘The hand is integral to the different manifestations of human intelligence'.                              Juhani Pallasmaa, ‘The thinking hand’ 2009

I aim to create work that is socially engaged. Much of what I make is designed to be shown out doors to a wide audience, so everyone on the street (many of whom will not be gallery goers) gets a free 'backstage pass'.

My work often deals with opposites; Ancient / Modern,  Worthless / Priceless -  a way to expose the structures that underlie things.

It is important to me that my work is relevant, questioning. A recurring theme is the impact of technology on human behaviour and the natural world.

Starting art school aged 16, I have developed my practice incrementally over the years both in my own studio, and as a sculpture tutor, a fabricator for other artists and with commercial projects. 

So have I gained experience in a wide range of materials and techniques, enabling me to realise work at scale that is expressive and durable. 

Materials and their associations are important to me - the architectural mass and scale of concrete, colour and translucency of plastics, notions of value with bronze, gold or glass. Each has it’s own associations in the language of materials.

I don’t use complex machines in my work, I prefer the control and intimacy of making by hand; an important distinction, since to form something by hand is to have that thing pass into your conscious self and back into the world renewed, subjective, and intrinsically human.

In fact, the hand informs everything that I do, yet the hand seems almost to slip from view in a world dominated by machine made objects and the untouchable world beyond a glowing screen.

I believe the imprint of touch, and the human actions recorded in an object are important. Objects we encounter in the world are experienced through our physical being - we estimate, measure and reveal the world to ourself as a reflection of the body we possess.
And for me, sculpture is a particular discipline; it is a story told in form, mass and surface, and exists in space, sharing the world with every other thing, like a human being.

Richard Mackness 2025