Les Bicknell
Suffolk-based artist Les Bicknell, is a Senior Lecturer at Norwich University of the Arts and a teaching fellow at King's College, London. Les’s work has been exhibited widely and is held in many national and international collections including The Rijksmuseum, The V&A Museum, M.O.M.A. New York, Yale Centre for British Art, The Tate Gallery. Les will be Artist in Residence at Sizewell C for the coming year.
Les says ‘I’m interested in making work that creates space for the viewer, enabling them to stop and reflect, facilitating moments of contemplation. There is the transfer of agency as the notion of authorship is passed from the maker to the viewer of the work. Each interaction is unique to the moment, this acknowledgement of audience is at the heart of what I do.
Currently my practice has several strands: exploring ideas around control through the articulated handheld structures I created in response to scientists using their hands to explain scientific principles and processes. Working with 3D printing, to exploring notions of duality by linking ideas around the brain’s development with the double page of an open book to create ethereal sculptures which teeter on the edge of collapsing.
My work is called hybrid, and my practice interdisciplinary but really, it’s about noticing or thinking about something then finding the appropriate medium in which too explore it and then share with a wider public. This might be a paper sculpture, folded to act as a template to explain processes around receptor pharmacology, several tonne of carved granite to celebrate the history of a space in Colchester or an editioned bookwork of questions children asked of the statues that I had created with Laurence Edwards 25 years ago for a town trail, a copy of which was then given to all the participants.
My connection to the creative process has developed by investigating ideas that underpin the question of what makes a book - sequence, order, control, time, and revelation. The work set out to speculate that form can be content, and sequence can be ordered by the manipulation of the pieces. The work became a question rather than an answer.
People really don’t like change, something I learnt early on when undertaking residencies linked to large scale public art projects, where people’s environments were being altered dramatically. I was interested in the power of art to enable people to see the opportunities available when they became open to possibilities. My research and entry point into the design of two streets in Lowestoft that were about to be changed started when I found an image of the street being dug up 2 years after it was created to accommodate gas lighting. This generated a new perspective on the proposed work and conversations flowed. Change is a given, we are change’.
To see Les’ work, visit http://lesbicknell.blogspot.com