Simon Hitchens FRSS and Susan York FRSS In Conversation

Join us for a third edition of Material Encounters, a new online series of talks presented by independent curator and cultural producer Isabel de Vasconcellos. Each conversation pairs two Fellows of the Society and invites them to zoom in on a shared element of their practice: to unpack how they work with a particular material or process, exploring what draws them to it and how it has come to define their sculptural language. 

For our next conversation on Wednesday 29 April, we are pleased to have Simon Hitchens FRSS and Susan York FRSS so click on the link to register and join!

Simon Hitchens FRSS 

My sculptures subtly investigate the essence of the things we perceive: the physical world, nature and our place within it. I am fascinated by rock: historically as a medium to make sculpture, physically as the very earth that supports us and geologically as the almost ageless constant that resonates through time, giving perspective to our lives on this planet.

In the age of the Anthropogenic it seems pertinent to question how we comprehend the geological and human worlds as united, interconnected even. Hitchens believes there is increasingly a disconnect between these two worlds which is harmful not only to the planet but also our psyche. Consequently, rock is the conceptual focus of his work and typically the material backbone within it. His work questions differences between animate and inanimate, more specifically rock and flesh, mountain and body; exploring themes of time and transience. His work explores the numinous: a line of inquiry into the nature of being.

Simon Hitchens graduated in Fine Art from the University of the West of England in 1990 and his work has been exhibited around the world since then. He frequently exhibits in solo and group exhibitions, undertaking private commissions and numerous large-scale public commissions. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Sculptors in 1998, is an RWA Academician, is the fourth generation of artist in his family and is represented by CLOSE Ltd.

Susan York FRSS 

I explore the relationships between form, space, and elemental material in my work. Rooted in a minimalist sensibility, my practice spans sculpture, drawing, prints, and site-sensitive installation. Committing myself to a single medium over long periods of time, I sculpt and draw in graphite, clay, copper, and iron.

Growing up in the American West, a place with wide mesas, mud buildings, and a large sky, has inspired my practice of working with primary elements, properties, and structures. The spare landscape of my home in New Mexico provides a vast expanse to contemplate the phenomena of light and traces of geologic time embedded in the typography of the high mountain desert and canyon lands.

My longstanding interest in reducing structure to the most essential of elements has also been motivated in large part by the artists of the Constructivist and de Stijl movements. I am particularly compelled by methodologies for translating two-dimensional shapes to three-dimensional form. The recurrent question of what determines flatness and how we perceive dimension foreshadows an entire series of relational geometric sculpture that spans my early career to present-day body of work.

Isabel de Vasconcellos is an independent curator and cultural producer, with extensive experience collaborating with artists and visual arts organisations to realise world-class public commissions and exhibitions. She writes on contemporary art, photography and design, and is the author of Fourth Plinth: How London Created the Smallest Sculpture Park in the World.