Iain Hales
PAITINGS
3rd November 2024 - 5th January 2025
Concerns over texture, material and colour are central to Iain Hales’ sculptural practice. His works are almost entirely produced by hand, with an exacting quality of execution. Research towards colour came into his work over fifteen years ago, leading to an increased interest in painting and the fundamental question, ‘what would a painting made by a sculptor look like?’ In his continual attempt to collapse the space between painting and sculpture, Hales explores the slippage between ‘object’ and ‘image’, three-dimensions and flatness, form and surface.
For his exhibition at m2 Gallery, Hales is showing a series of wall-based works. In these, he revisits some of his favoured reference points and motifs – the grid, layering, the classical ruin or fragment, juxtaposing minimal and expressionistic forms, and combining industrial with more esoteric art materials in each work.
Indoors, for the opening event – and by appointment subsequently – Hales is showing a large-scale sculptural work, previously exhibited this summer at Cross Lane Projects in Kendal, and a series of photographs.
Iain Hales completed his MFA in Sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art in 2009. He was the 2013/14 recipient of the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award and is a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors. He has exhibited widely, including group shows at APT Gallery in London, Two Queens in Leicester and Baltic 39 in Newcastle, and has made several solo exhibitions in London. Most recently his work was included in “The Hidden Horizontal: The Cornice in Art and Architecture” at the Graphische Sammlung ETH Zurich, Switzerland and "Thinking is Making" at Standpoint Gallery, London.