Stones, Ergonomics, Eco-Asemics

“The sculptures are the size of fists, and with their polished surfaces and impeccable ergonomic forms, they recall miniature Brâncusi sculptures. If Modernist sculpture was often influenced by the machinery of the factory (and the battlefield), Christian’s sculptures are informed by the prosthetic forms of technological interfaces.”
George Vasey, ‘Bruised Stones: On the Work of Toby Christian’, 2019

Toby Christian is an artist and educator whose practice centres around writing and sculpture. Over the course of sixteen years he has developed an evolving series of direct stone carvings in marble, and during the past six years specifically, a series of works which aim to explore the simultaneous legacies of technological ergonomics and modernist sculptural practices, including the work of Constantin Brâncuşi. Having exhibited these works in solo exhibitions internationally, he has more recently developed a new extension of this series for the exhibition Flash_Looking, at Belmacz, London, 2024.

Christian’s video presentation contextualises the production of the above series of stone carvings from the studio he has established in the converted 1960s garage of his home in Lewisham, South East London. Through this, Christian conveys the technical process of his work whilst both drawing on research into the questionably patriarchal approaches of 1970/80’s ergonomics studies for efficiency in the workplace, and the Eco-Asemic images produced by unknown insect colonies in the marble dust of his studio window.

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"Brâncuşi is one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, hailed by Henry Moore for stripping back sculpture’s centuries-old overgrowth and restoring its shape consciousness. Brâncuşi’s artistic innovations drew the attention of an international network of Modernist peers throughout his career, including in Britain, where his work was first exhibited in 1913.

In more recent decades, historians have reckoned with the complexity of the artist’s work in new ways, teasing out its dynamics of difference and repetition, transience and permanence, abstraction and embodiment. This conference will invite participants to continue this dialogue, taking this plural view of Brâncuşi as a touchstone for questions about the relationship between British sculpture and the international avant-garde.

This conference marks the conclusion of the Henry Moore Foundation’s research season ‘Brâncuşi and Britain’, organised to coincide with the major exhibition of Brâncuşi’s work at Centre Pompidou, Paris in spring 2024. Alex Potts (University of Michigan) will deliver the keynote presentation.

The Brâncuşi and Britain Research Season has been kindly supported by the Romanian Cultural Institute."