Creative Exchange – Vanstone

“The nature of the material dictates how each piece evolves”

As long time admirers, we are delighted to welcome Paul Vanstone to our sculpture programme in Mayfair.

Vanstone has inherited the millennia-old fascination with the possibilities of marble to depict the human form. His fascination is with the hardness and light reflecting qualities of the material and how this can be transformed to portray the curvature of the human body and the delicacy and flow of covering cloth. The nature of the material dictating how each piece evolves.

The origins of each sculpture begins with sourcing the perfect marble block in the quarry, and so for the last twenty years Vanstone has searched around the world for the beautiful marbles, travelling to Rajasthan, India, and throughout Europe and the Middle East. Once the perfect block has been sourced and shipped back to North West London, Paul then sketches his design onto it before carving the form using both traditional and contemporary tools.

“The work at 33 Davies Street follows a particular strand of my work. A strand I have been visiting for the last thirty years. These cloth sculptures reference ancient carvings, playing with the contrast of soft cloth being realised into hard stone.  The marble is sourced in Carrara, Italy and Vila Viçosa, central Portugal.”