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Norman Dilworth Norman Dilworth Time &Tide The process of nature waits for no man. Just as the time and place influence the work we make. 20 Cork Street London W1S 3HL T +44 (0)20 7734 1732 redfern-gallery.com MUSÉE MATISSE 2007 Around and About, realised in 1984, is a relief, made from a circle whose centre has been unevenly cut out to form consecutively- arranged angles: acute, increasingly open, flat, and lastly re-entrant. The magnitude and sides of each angle are calculated according to an arithmetic progression. The artist has set out to create a contrast of forms, here rationally elaborated and easily demonstrable, which gives the work movement and balance through the tension between outside and inside, the opposition between curves and angles, and the overall expression of its rhythm. Norman Dilworth has elaborated numerous systems and his creations adopt various forms. Their presentation can be unexpected, like the sculpture in the form of a zigzag, Meander, that was laid in a riverbed in 1991 and indicates which way the current flows, or the piece entitled Jouetssance, composed of 49 wooden elements painted in the colours of the French flag that were scattered on the beach at Calais one September day in 2005. Norman Dilworth takes the rigour of programmes and adds the thrill of discovery. He is now living in Lille, where he settled in 2002 having once lived in Paris, from 1956 to 1957, on a French government grant. His path is original and consequential, his work varied and rich. Serge Lemoine Ex Director Musée D’Orsay, Paris [Extract from exhibition catalogue: Norman Dilworth, Musée Matisse, Le Cateau-Cambrésis, 2007] Around and About 1984 wood painted white 122 cm diameter 4 | Norman Dilworth 5 Turning the Corner 2000 corten steel 89 × 89 cm Photo © Christine Cadin 6 | Norman Dilworth 7 Nub 9 2013 wood stained black 30 × 25 × 18 cm 8 | Norman Dilworth 9 Random Elements (No 9 of 30) 1972/2003 stainless steel 16 × 16 × 16 cm Photo © Christine Cadin 10 | Norman Dilworth 11 Four Cut Corners 3 2010 corten steel 144 × 144 cm Photo © Christine Cadin 12 | Norman Dilworth 13 2 and 2 1997 wood stained black 32 × 13 × 13 cm 14 | Norman Dilworth 15 Cut Corners 1 2005 graphite on paper 65 × 50 cm Cut Corners 2 2005 graphite on paper 65 × 50 cm 16 | Norman Dilworth 17 Three Cubes 2016 steel painted white 90 × 40 × 40 cm 18 | Norman Dilworth 19 Signs 1990 wood painted black. In 25 pieces (each piece 15 × 15 cm) 20 | Norman Dilworth 21 Simple Progression 1 2015 wood painted black and white 56 × 56 × 2.6 cm 22 | Norman Dilworth 23 Blue and Black 1966 screenprint on paper 53.5 × 51 cm Signed, dated and inscribed: ‘A/P’. Only 8 proofs printed 24 | Norman Dilworth 25 Cornering 1 2015 board and corten steel 100 × 100 cm 26 | Norman Dilworth 27 Untitled 1970 screenprint on paper 54 × 54 cm Red Diagonal 1970 screenprint on paper 54 × 54 cm Signed, dated and numbered from the edition of 34 impressions Signed, dated and numbered from the edition of 34 impressions 28 | Norman Dilworth 29 45° 7 2008 wood stained black 39 × 27 × 16 cm 30 | Norman Dilworth 31 Puffball 1972/2016 aluminium 150 × 150 cm Photo © Christine Cadin 32 | Norman Dilworth 33 [FROM CATALOGUE: Norman Dilworth, Photo © Christine Cadin SCULPTURE + RELIEFS Amsterdam studio, 1985 1972-1980] An exhibition of my work in and plasticity of its neighbours that drawings, mostly cartoons, from to articulate it. The elusiveness exhibitions, I saw work of In the sixties, I took the properties Amsterdam was thought to be is peculiar to this country—the newspapers and magazines. of the contour which separates the Surrealists and Dadaists, and dimensions of the elements typically Dutch by visiting young separateness of parts (the walls volume and space we learned from early exhibitions by Yves Klein as the starting point, and the Italians are one thing, the roof another) At my Jesuit school I took Art, for Cezanne. and Pollock, a large Matisse organisation of elements in simple the way all planes have to meet at which my parents had to pay extra. retrospective and for the first growth series (as simple as 2, 4, 6, Whereas it is true that “the basic right-angles to form separate cubic There was practically no teaching Working from a model or still-life, time an exhibition of Mondrian’s 8) now determined the character problems of contemporary art boxes. The parts are not moulded given, and I evolved a method of in an endeavour to be objective paintings. of the work. The process could be are independent of any country.” together, part is added to part and drawing in perspective using thick and not make aesthetic choices, seen to develop within one single Jackson Pollock, who made this each allowed to live on its own. This and thin lines. At this time the only which we deplored, we used What I had seen in Paris was structure or series of structures. statement, modified it by saying, “awkward angularity” as Niklaus subject that really gripped my calipers, plumb-line and ruler in reinforced by exhibitions that had at At this time the line functioned as “An American is an American Pevsner called it, can be seen attention, and which I was any good a strict system of measurement. last reached England. For a period, definition of form in space. In those and his painting will naturally be as characteristic of English art in at was Mathematics. I was prepared Points were plotted in space with London became a centre for the works where it delineated a volume qualified by that fact, whether he general. Further, the emphasis is on to persevere with Mathematics the use of three dimensional grids. art market, which is not necessarily of mass, the line had no dimension. wills it or not.” I am neither Dutch line rather than form. Form in the into Further Education, but was Concentrating on the procedure, the beneficial to art, but as artists we In open constructions where the nor American and my origins have full-bodied sense of the sculptural dissuaded from doing so by my marks built up the image without did not feel cut off from other artists volume was space, the lines I their own influence. forms of Southern Europe is hardly Prefect of Studies, who advised me having to invent it. in other countries. I made my first used were the minimum thickness to be found here. It has nothing to that there was no future in it. contacts with Holland at this time necessary to make up a stable The English character is do with whether the English knew I went to Paris in 1956 and was and learned more of Mondrian structure. represented by the tourist board how to build such forms, the urge to After two years studying general able to visit Giacometti, sometimes and “pure plastic, determinate- with a view of a church tower, and do so was not there. sciences my father persuaded me in company with Tseng Yu, relationships”. His interpretation As the lines describing volumes of the choice does not only reflect to apply to the local Art School. the Chinese artist, Giacometti of the evolution of painting from space had to be given substance, a known respect for tradition, it The generation of form in space by From there I went on to the Slade. expressed a deep interest in naturalistic to abstract, to Abstract- consideration of their dimension has typical local characteristics. the use of lines and grid networks At the Slade I worked in both the Chinese painting, where light and Real plastic, held new relevance and the articulation of joints, which The truncated tower of an English recurs throughout the English painting and sculpture departments, shade are not used as a device for me at a time when I was still began as simple practicalities, church has none of the thrusting tradition, from the earliest times to which was unusual at that time. to render solids, and where the struggling with abstraction. opened up new fields of possibility. ambition of the spire more usually the iron and glass structures of the figurative elements in a composition seen on the Continent. Its aspiration nineteenth century and beyond. These years were spent in the coexist without contour or strict The desire for objectivity brought Starting from the proportion of the is not overblown. The polarities of I grew up in this climate and with climate of post-war Existentialism. demarcation. His own late drawings into question the meaning of reality. material, by cutting and joining vertical and horizontal are held in these influences, but I do not think As students we identified with and paintings share similar The elements of a sculpture were methodically the process generated balance. If one examines, in plan of my work as conforming to any Giacometti, “the days pass and I concepts. real until I began to arrange them new forms. and elevation, the church itself and national type. delude myself that I am fixing what into a figurative image, when they compares it with its contemporaries is fugitive”. William Coldstream I spent 1956-57 in Paris, and became subordinate to an illusion. Norman Dilworth in France or Germany, one notices In my childhood art was something encouraged us to find an objective became aware of the influences To be objective I had to reject all 1981 an angularity about the English my father did for amusement, as an basis for our expression.