Tim Pomeroy sculptures in London
Virginia Rushton
“The Natural, Hewn; The Practical, Honed” was the perfect title for Tim Pomeroy’s show that ran from 4 – 27 May at Agnew’s very prestigious gallery in Albermarle Street, London. Virginia Rushton, a long-standing friend of Arran, sends us this report.
I nearly walked past Agnew’s gallery in busy Albermarle Street, all patisseries and posh shops and galleries peddling the world’s arts and crafts. But in the last fraction of time, Tim’s name, discreetly announced in white on a plate glass window, flicked into my field of vision. You have to ring for permission to enter, so there is a moment for adjusting to a world from which you are separated by glass, and other things too; this world is calm, uncluttered, discreet.
The atmosphere is created by and imbued with the quality and characteristics of Tim Pomeroy’s work. The display of twenty-three exhibits, including sculptures and two-dimensional art works, is striking for its lack of colour; except for one piece covered in gold leaf and the occasional gold embellishment, every piece is monochrome. The other striking thing is that nothing is superfluous, it is absolutely not “in your face”: This art compels you to stand still and watch and – surprisingly – listen.
It is all so deceptively simple. Each piece is rooted in the every-day or the natural: on one level you recognise something represented. String II looks like a weaver’s roll of yarn but the meticulously carved marble celebrates texture and line and pattern, invites the eye to travel the pathways of thread, leading through eye to mind to imagination. Starfruit, in Portland stone, looks like its title; the planes of the shaped stone display grains and tonal flecks like fossilised pollen dust; but the shape itself reminded me of a jet propeller, and the piece confronted me with an uneasy juxtaposition, paradox and contradiction. Mimosa in its composition of replicated globes of blossom cannot exist if even one globe is missing. Something very interesting is going here.
Shape and material seem to be interdependent in Tim’s work. But how does it work? What was it in a piece of Carrera marble that inspired him to shape a whorl? What did the marble’s veins trigger in his imagination? What does the smooth whorl, a kind of materialisation of concentric circles that contain both nothing and something, suggest to the imagination and, indeed, to the mind of the person who contemplates it?
This is above all an exhibition for watching and for contemplation. The sculptor’s skill of eye and steady hand allied to an inner thought and understanding really do make out of stone a visible pulse and rhythm through form and detail. Here Tim’s other skills as poet and musician seem to be playing their part too: the power of each piece to resonate is truly astonishing.
Nicholas Usherwood wrote with great truth in the exhibition catalogue “…these are sculptures that reach out and touch us also for, as the painter Ken Kiff once observed ‘images that can have meaning for other people can only come from sources deep within oneself. If they come from these sources other people share them.’”
Click pictures below to see them in more detail.
Tim’s wife, Josephine Bruikheuzen, also well known as an artist, is pictured here with Kenneth Gibson at the opening of her one-woman show in the Dutch Consulate in Edinburgh. Unfortunately access is by appointment only as it’s a working consulate with security issues.
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