Kenny Hunter at Roche Court
Roche Rooks (detail), 2008, resin and paint, The New Art Centre, Roche Court
A new exhibition focusing on the work of Scottish sculptor Kenny Hunter is on show at Roche Court in Wiltshire until 4 May.
Roche Court’s elegant fusion of Georgian and contemporary architecture and inside and outside space is the perfect setting for Kenny Hunter’s new work. A life-size resin, jesmonite and steel deer stands as though poised for flight, and it’s only when you get closer that you see it’s trapped behind glass walls. And it’s only when you’re right beside it that you see the deer can’t move anyway as it’s dragging an old tyre – it was inspired by stories of deer seen scavenging on the streets in Glasgow. Another unexpected piece is a seemingly abstract-patterned wreath actually made up of four linked rooks. These surprises are fairly typical of Hunter’s work; ‘Much of what I do has an ironic edge, a sense of humour emanating from the unexpected juxtaposition of materials, subject matter and the language of classical statuary’, he explains.
Hunter’s pieces stylistically belong to the monumental tradition of civic sculpture, but his subject matter – be it pairs of (mating?) rabbits or cats slinking through a forest of chair legs – give them a strongly contemporary, almost pop sensibility. This mixture is deliberate and he says, ‘My works are hybrids which fuse sculptural orthodoxies with post modern culture.’
www.sculpture.uk.com
