Blue Column II

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Downing Street

‘Marks on a paper, lines and smudges, an idea looking for a form or just a notion needing clarity,’ is what David Nash once said in reference to his drawings. Looking at this pigment stencil print, the viewer may gain a sense of what the artist meant. A familiar series of forms in a familiar formation that one can't quite pin down to a clear definition, the work offers perhaps, a space of opening, of almost seeing something, not completely defined. Nash is known for his monumental wood sculptures and charcoal drawings that explore human interaction with the natural environment. He works with natural materials, including found wood, tree stumps and and with trees themselves, as living sculptures. Ash Dome is one of his most talked-about works; a circle of 22 ash trees that since 1978 he has been coaxing to bend and meet at the top. He often carves, cuts and blackens his material with industrial tools.

David Nash was born in Surrey and trained at Kingston College of Art from 1963 to 1967. He later studied at Chelsea School of Art (1969–70). As a child, Nash had spent family holidays visiting his grandparents in the Ffestiniog Valley of north Wales. In 1966, he settled in the village of Blaenau Ffestiniog, where he still lives and works. Nash’s first solo exhibitions were held in 1973, and he has exhibited regularly ever since. His work has featured in important international exhibitions, including Aspects of British Art Today at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum in 1982; and in 1999, the exhibition, 'Sculptors’ Drawings 1945–90', at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. He had a major solo exhibition at Tate St Ives in 2004, and in that same year, was awarded an OBE for services to art. Nash’s work can be found in public collections worldwide, as diverse as the Tate, London, and the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan.

Places

Subjects

land art, sculpture (as Subject), Nature & science

Materials & Techniques

paper (as artists material), pigment, pigment print, stencil

Artist

David Nash (1945 - )

Title

Blue Column II

Edition

Number 4 in an edition of 25

Date

2018

Medium

pigment on paper stencil print

Dimensions

height: 103.2 cm; width: 66.2 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Towner Art Gallery, November 2019

Inscription

recto: inscribed by the artist 'Blue Column II 4/25', bottom left; 'David Nash '18'

Provenance

The artist; from whom provided to Towner Art Gallery for 200 Seasons exhibition, September 2019; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 12 November 2019

GAC number

18834