Gavin McClafferty

...some words from Tolstoy: "I do not cease to reflect upon art and upon every form of temptation which obscures the spirit."

My formal art education started with a one year foundation course at Wimbledon School of Art followed by two years of a sculpture degree at Falmouth School of Art, including a three month exchange to Holland.

Since then I have spent the last few years working on various projects such as the Deptford Urban Free Festival in 1992; a fund raising album for the Anti-Criminal Justice Bill in '94 and the acoustic band Days of Pure Enjoyment.

Currently I have an exhibition of drawings in Amsterdam and my future projects include an autobiographical film on the topics discussed below.

Whilst at Falmouth my work shifted between abstract-figurative and conceptual work, but was underpinned with a spiritual dimension, namely that all things animate and inanimate have a value and life and soul of their own. So my art tried to represent man in a living world.

This inevitably led me to a paradox that is common to art: the desire to describe the actual world in spiritual terms through the exploitation and manipulation of materials.

It eventually found its' metaphor in the landscapes of personal relationships; excitement, discovery, birth, joy, interraction, learning, understanding, sex, gravity, fusion, tension, seperation, pain and acceptance, these all being aspects of this one theme.

To me it also describes the passage of the physical and emotional self through life, as well as the relationships that are part of that journey.

My art therefore takes different forms to describe my personal exploration including music, sculpture, painting, poetry and drawing.

It is through the depiction of universal "things" such as the human form, automatic drawing and recognisable objects that I hope to strike a chord with the viewer, communicating with him or her an understanding of the world, great and small, personal and impersonal.

Please enjoy my work and feel free to contact me at the following address:

11 Hillside Road,
London SW2 3HL
fax: 0181 674 6849