Simon Hitchens: Viewing Room

3 - 3 Dec 2023

Since graduating from the University of the West of England in 1990, Simon has exhibited in group and solo exhibitions around the world. He frequently undertakes private commissions and numerous large-scale public commissions. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Sculptors in 1998, is an RWA Academician and has been shortlisted for the Jerwood Sculpture Prize. He is the fourth generation of artists in his family.

Simon’s solo exhibition of sculpture and drawings is now open at the Somerset Rural Life Museum, curated by CLOSE Ltd, until the 2nd December 2023.

In the age of the Anthropogenic it seems pertinent to question how we comprehend the geological and human worlds as united, interconnected even. Hitchens believes there is increasingly a disconnect between these two worlds which is harmful not only to the planet but also our psyche. Consequently, rock is the conceptual focus of his work and typically the material backbone within it. His work questions differences between animate and inanimate, more specifically rock and flesh, mountain and body as part of an ongoing exploration into the theme of time and transience; a line of inquiry into the nature of being and things larger than ourselves. His large-scale public commissions for private companies, public bodies and town councils are always concerned with the specifics of place whilst retaining the integrity of his sculptural voice. He makes minimal, even poetic, sculptures that belie the technical difficulty and drama of their making, typically exploring contrasts of all kinds with an economy of means that has become his trademark.

"Rock is the material backbone to my creative explorations and the conceptual focus of my sculptures. Over the years my physical involvement with rock has become increasingly minimal as I combine this most traditional of sculpting materials with more contemporary and technically challenging ones such as clear cast resin, cast stainless steel, mirrors and photography."

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PARALLELS | An Exhibition of Sculpture and Drawings
CURRENT EXHIBITION AT THE SOMERSET RURAL LIFE MUSEUM, GLASTONBURY, curated by CLOSE Ltd. 16 Sept - 2 Dec 2023
PARALLEL PROJECT
Autumn Equinox 2019
- For three weeks spanning the autumn equinox of 2019 Hitchens travelled the full height of the British Isles, from latitude 50 in Cornwall to latitude 60 in Shetland. The purpose of the journey was to find rocks from eleven different geological time periods, and an additional lump of discarded plastic from a twelfth geological time period, and to make a durational day drawing of the shadow lines cast from each geological object, on twelve specific locations and lines of latitude. Each day a geological object was placed upon a sheet of paper set up before dawn. As the sun rose in the east Hitchens traced its first shadow cast upon the surface of the paper with a pen, taking about two minutes to complete. In that small space of time the Earth had spun just a little on its axis, advancing the shadow and he would immediately start drawing the new shadow line. This process was repeated relentlessly until either a cloud obscured the sun, and there was no shadow to draw, or the sun dipped below the western horizon at the end of the day.
- These are process-based drawings made in, of and about the landscape; the result of a particular set of conditions, in a particular place, over a particular span of time. They record celestial time, geological time and human time as well as the weather patterns unique to that day and site: a meditation on time and space. Even the solidity of mountains given time, will eventually erode into nothing, echoing the transience of human life.
  The twelve sculptures are casts of the midday shadows from each of the twelve geological time periods, directly indexed to each drawing and quite literally making the fourth dimension, three-dimensional. Made from cast iron they give form to the negative, liminal space of shadows. They accurately record the haptic qualities of the Earth’s geology at a specific time and location, linking us to the past through the present and connecting us to something larger than ourselves.
'I am interested in the interconnectedness between the human and the non-human, as a means to learning about Mankind’s relationship with impermanence.'
Bearing Witness to Things Unseen
Chichester Cathedral, June 2022
"By isolating a section of the physical world and exploring its raw force of nature, the work presents us with a possibility for that which is, or could be."

Entering Chichester Cathedral from the western door, one is confronted by an irregular shaped, polished black portal standing central to the nave on its flag-stone floor. Appearing as an absence of space and matter within the fabric of the cathedral, this phenomenon holds your reflection as you approach. Walking past the reflective portal reveals its dense black surface; parallel grooves and ridges running along its length as if having been extruded. Contrasting with the flat polished western end, the eastern end is a cave-like void, a craggy cast of a boulder which is now absent. This is the shadow of an ancient rock, cast by the rising sun on the equinox.

Made from dense black matter this uncanny, rough textured object, has a significant human presence because of its associative height and width and the ability to see oneself reflected in the flat polished western surface. It references time: deep geological time, celestial time and human time. Consequently, it also speaks of transience and the interconnected nature of what we share with the world.

Facing due East, as congregations do for prayer, this presence possesses a devotional aspect, a search for the numinous, which I believe to be relevant today. It speaks of things larger than ourselves. Text by Simon Hitchens