Malcolm Martin and Gaynor Dowling

Martin and Dowling starting working together twelve years ago, originally Malcolm studied Fine Art at the Royal College of Art and Gaynor was a textile artist. Their collaborative pieces straddle the intersecting fields of sculpture and craft. Craft, because the discipline of carving is central to their work, and sculpture because the artists are concerned with the representation of objects through the development of a formal language. The artists also say that their work is 'about the encounter of hand and wood, in this case tough, grainy, English oak, mediated by very sharp, very traditional, steel gouges. Pattern and texture emerge from the repetitive nature of the act of carving, working onto fluid forms somewhere between vessels and the memories of bodies.' The use of gouges also allows the artists to draw complex shadow relief surfaces that articulate the fall of light across these graceful and simple forms. They have an established International reputation and their work is held in many public collections, including Boston Museum of Fine Art, USA; Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery (Contemporary Art Society purchase) UK; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK; Ruskin Gallery, Sheffield, UK; and The Wood Turning Center, Philadephia USA.