Evolver 117 - September and October 2020

VISUAL ARTS September and October 2020 8 Peter Randall-Page is a major British sculptor, with public sculpture sited internationally in urban and rural locations. His work communicates the emotional response to the natural world as a universal quality. His sculpture is often embedded in the location where it is sited becoming both a celebration of and part of the environment. In Newbury, Ebb and Flow , a huge granite bowl, magically fills and empties mirroring the changing water levels of the lock alongside it. Peter has spent much of this extraordinary year hiding out in a remote hut in Devon. His new large studio space temporarily abandoned in favour of a place, which offered near silence and peace. Here, he has been hand-carving ‘pebbles’ collected on his travels over the years, ranging from pocket sized to about a foot in length. The absence of power tools, people or even the radio allowed him to focus on the rhythm, which is part of his working method, a characteristic shared with music. His interest in music is profound, his taste ranging from JS Bach to John Cage to bebop jazz, but he reserves his passion for Bach. You can see the relationship with his work: the adherence to structure, the measured control and the use of repetition, but slightly altered, with variations. When we spoke he had just been listening to the Bach Suites for Unaccompanied Cello . For him Bach offers hope for the world: his genius was to write music of such power and intensity, mathematical and yet also profoundly moving and emotional. Peter finds it useful to describe what he does in terms of music. Music has an immediacy which directly relates itself to ‘EVOLUTION 16’ (Ink on handmade paper, 51 x 83 cm) PETER RANDALL-PAGE ‘A LITTLE BIT OF INFINITY C’ (Ink on Kahdi paper, 83 x 16 x 7 cm) his carving and he draws an analogy with the tuning of a musical instrument: “When you are working, subconsciously shaping something, the stone has a tautness and a strength and you know when the note is right.” On arriving in his isolated hut in the woods he initially made drawings of the bracken, entranced by its energy and fractal quality as the fronds unfurled. Using small concertina sketchbooks he made Rorschach type ink drawings. As these, A Little Bit of Infinity book drawings are opened out, a wonderful combination of symmetrical and asymmetrical images unfold, gifting individual pages an ambiguity and indulging his desire for pattern. He sees a correlation between pattern as an intrinsic part of nature and its appearance in his work. This is particularly evident in the powerful Rorschach Evolution series. The rough Indian Kahdi paper he uses responds beautifully to the way that he pours ink and allows it to flow letting it find its own pathway down the paper under his direction. The randomness in the risk-taking process of making his ink drawings hint at the way systems of language developed as a descriptive tool. The physicality of the hand-made paper makes sense in relationship to Randall- Page’s other materials of choice, stone, bronze and iron. They each illicit different responses and he works within the constraints they impose, capitalising on their inherent qualities and responding to their strengths: the malleability of clay, the intransigence of granite, the softness of wax. In printmaking, linocut, allows him to combine drawing and carving in a boldness of mark that echoes his dramatic use of ink and charcoal on paper. Randall-Page’s mark-making language makes a universal connection with the intangible language of music, the recording of narrative in pictograms and the geometric patterning in nature. Another public sculpture, The One and The Many , located in Central London in Fitzroy Place, is a celebration of the aesthetic beauty of written script and its extraordinary power to communicate across space and time. The carved marks on the small ‘pebbles’ that he has been making in the last few months speak with a language that eludes but intrigues us, inviting slow looking and reverie. Touch is an essential part of ‘reading’ them. His sculptures are tactile inviting touch, communicating not just through their visual forms but through the contrasting textures of their surfaces. As objects they occupy space in a way that makes sense in our chaotic world. They have a weightiness and certainty that anchors one, a powerful presence. Fiona Robinson PETER RANDALL-PAGE: ‘A LITTLE BIT OF INFINITY’ 20 September - 30 October Rabley Drawing Centre, MARLBOROUGH, SN8 2LW. Open by appointment: rableygallery.com . 01672 511999.