‘A Clearing’ - Bruce Ingram - 2024

Bruce Ingram takes an experimental approach to his layered works on paper and assembled sculptures. The rich environment of the artist’s studio provides both the reference and the raw material for the creation of abstract compositions. Ingram’s works reference a modernist concern with shape and form, often blurring the boundaries between the familiar and abstract. 

Ingram leaves his creative process open to improvisation and spontaneity, often choosing to deconstruct and morph his artworks to make more unexpected or pre-determined outcomes. The studio environment is a fertile ground, where off-cuts of materials and studio sweepings are often physically included in an artwork’s surface and construction. The eclectic mix of references add a purpose of place, history and narrative. 

Disregarded off-cuts of wood, textiles and other cut-out shapes litter the studio floor, all drifting before being collected and incorporated into an artwork’s surface. The fluid nature of this studio process is central to the production of Ingram’s work, with the process of collage and appropriation informing new outcomes and dialogues. Individual artworks drift between wall and floor and are physically broken down and amalgamated into irregular forms. Canvases sometimes form the basis for sculptures, whilst found objects are embedded into a picture plane

This working approach is further employed in his ongoing exploration of paper, a medium that combines his interest in both drawing and sculpture. Works on paper are re-evaluated in this process, with rejected drawings finding a new value through the process of ripping and layering. Ingram chooses to use the immediacy of a hand-held staple gun to fasten irregular shapes of paper together. This energetic process provides a surface to further explore drawing, mark making and painting and incorporates shadow and tone within the rich three-dimensional paper surface.   Through cutting with scissors and painting on layers of paper, Ingram builds up and takes away surfaces until a visual harmony is achieved in both form and composition. The cumulative nature of these works gives a feeling of impermanence, embracing the transient and often ephemeral qualities of their constituent parts. 

Bruce was born in Falmouth and grew up in Cornwall, he studied Sculpture at Brighton University and the Royal College of Art. He lives and works in Hastings, East Sussex. 

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