Under the Sign of the Hourglass

Lesley Hilling

6 March – 5 April 2014

Private view 6 March 5:00 – 9:00

“I like to make something new out of objects that had a different life before. My aim is to create a unified whole that is at once sculptural in it’s three dimensional form and painterly as each piece of wood I use is selected for its colour, texture and tonal quality.”

Lesley Hilling’s organic wooden sculptures are instantly recognisable for their organic elegance and architectural construction. Taking up to a year to complete, Lesley creates her intricately composed utopian towers with embedded objects and relics from the past. Fragile seagull eggs, crustacea shells, dominoes, pocket watches, photographs of Lesley’s family and valves from an old radio, have all been woven into the woodwork. “There is an interplay between what is hidden, what is revealed and what is to be discovered.”

Lesley uses only recycled materials and found objects. “It not only saves money, but also cuts down on all the unnecessary stuff in the world.” It also gives her the added pleasure of searching in skips for the items that correspond with her vision. Out with the old and into the new. Her work conveys a powerful sense of longing to preserve the fragments of the past, a desire for order, a passionate and mysterious evocation of lost moments.

Lesley lives with her partner Nell and two dogs ‘Beckett and ‘Grace’ in a housing Cooperative in Brixton set up in the 1970’s. Her house is testimony to her work, where one can easily lose sight of what is fact and what is fiction. The doors are perhaps the most intriguing structures one might encounter in any house. Walking from room to room feels like falling down a rabbit hole. A poster in the front window still proclaims the evils of Thatcher. Her home feels like a living and breathing sculpture.