Nigel Hall (born 30 August 1943 in

Bristol Bristol () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, the most populous city in the region. Built around the River Avon, Bristol, River Avon, it is bordered by t ...

) is an English sculptor and a draughtsman.

Life

Hall's grandfather was a stonemason working on churches and cathedrals and Hall was able to observe this work and the carving of stone was to influence his sculptures and drawings. He studied at the

West of England College of Art The University of the West of England (also known as UWE Bristol) is a Public university, public research university, located in and around Bristol, England, UK. With more than 39,912 students and 4,300 staff, it is the largest provider of hi ...

, Bristol from 1960 to 1964 and at the

Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public university, public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City, London, White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design uni ...

, London from 1964 to 1967. A

Harkness Fellowship The Harkness Fellowship (previously known as the Commonwealth Fund Fellowship) is a program run by the Commonwealth Fund of New York City. This fellowship was established to reciprocate the Rhodes Scholarships and enable Fellows from several co ...

took him to United States, to Canada and Mexico from 1967 to 1969. Only later, back in London, he travelled to Japan, Korea and Switzerland. From 1971 to 1981 Hall was a lecturer and external examiner of the Royal College of Art, London and ran the MA sculpture course at

Chelsea College of Art and Design Chelsea College of Arts is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London, a public art and design university in London, England. It offers further and higher education courses in fine art, graphic design, interior design, prod ...

. Hall lives and works in London. He was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in 2003.

Works

Hall has always created single and multi-coloured drawings. Since the 1960s he has also worked on sculptures and spatial structures. The interplay of shadows and balance in the works mean that their placement, whether indoors or outside, is important. Hall finds the landscape of the

Mojave Desert The Mojave Desert (; ; ) is a desert in the rain shadow of the southern Sierra Nevada mountains and Transverse Ranges in the Southwestern United States. Named for the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous Mohave people, it is located pr ...

and Swiss Alps spaces of silence and vastness. This influences his drawings and he keeps a diary of sketches on his frequent travels. His drawings represent more than half of his total work. His location-based

installation art Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific art, site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior intervent ...

is internationally known. A two-part wall relief in painted and gilded wood at the entrance of Providence Tower, Dallas (1989), a wall sculpture at the entrance to the

Australian National Gallery The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in th ...

, Canberra (1982), and his largest sculpture, a free-standing steel work at the entrance to the

Thameslink Thameslink is a mainline route on the British railway network, running from , , , , , and via central London to , , , Rainham, , , and . The network opened as a through service in 1988, with severe overcrowding by 1998, carrying more than ...

tunnel, London, 1993.

Selected exhibitions

* Solo exhibitions: 1967: Galerie Givaudan, Paris, France, - 1982: Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany, - 1995: Veranneman Foundation, Kruishoutem, Belgium, - 1998: New York Studio School Gallery, New York City, - 2001: Foundation Sculpture at Schoenthal, Langenbruck, Switzerland, - 2004: Kunsthalle Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany, - 2008: Park Ryu Sook Gallery, Seoul, South Korea, - 2008 ''Nigel Hall: Sculpture and Drawing 1965-2008'' -

Yorkshire Sculpture Park The Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) is an art gallery, with both open-air and indoor exhibition spaces, in West Bretton, Wakefield, in West Yorkshire, England. It shows work by British and international artists, including Henry Moore and Barb ...

, Wakefield, West Yorkshire * Group exhibitions: 1975: Biennale de Paris, Paris, France, - 1977:

documenta Documenta (often stylized documenta) is an Art exhibition, exhibition of contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. Documenta was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgarte ...

6, Kassel, Germany, - 2002/03:

Peggy Guggenheim Collection The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is an art museum on the Grand Canal in the Dorsoduro ''sestiere'' of Venice, Italy. It is one of the most visited attractions in Venice. The collection is housed in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, an 18th-century ...

, Venice, Italy, - 2001, 2003, 2005: "Blickachsen", Bad Homburg vor der Höhe, Germany, 2006: Museum of Fine Arts, Ostend, Belgium - 2015: ''British Art +'', Museum Biedermann, Donaueschingen, GermanyMuseum Biedermann: British Art+
with Nigel Hall, David Nash, Kenny Hunter, Matthew Radford, May Cornet * Public collections: Tate Gallery, London, - Musee National d'Art Moderne, Paris, France, - Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany, - Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Japan, - National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan, - Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia, - Dallas Museum of Fine Art, Texas, USA, - Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel Hall's sculpture ''Soda Lake'' was featured in Richard Alston's dance as the physical set for the piece. The dance piece was named after the sculpture. The sculpture was inspired by ''Soda Lake'' which can be found in the

. One part of the sculpture is a thin metal pole which stretched up at an angle and has a large elliptical loop attached at its apex. The second part is a thicker pole which is hung diametrically opposite the point at which the loop is attached to the thin pole, and is suspended so that it does not quite reach the ground. This is in two parts, the top section being marginally fatter than the lower. The upper end of the pole is slightly pointed whilst its lower end is bluntly rounded. The sculpture is made of fiberglass and aluminium and is painted gloss black. Hall used the concept of silence found at the landscape of ''Soda Lake'' and translated it into his sculpture through hanging one of the poles above the ground slightly.

Selected sculpture parks

, Wakefield, West Yorkshire * Cass Sculpture at Goodwood * Sculpture garden

Kunsthalle Mannheim The Kunsthalle Mannheim is a museum of modern and contemporary art, built in 1907, established in 1909 and located in Mannheim, Germany. Since then it has housed the city's art collections as well as temporary exhibitions – and up to 1927 those ...

, Mannheim, Germany * Foundation Sculpture at Schoenthal, Langenbruck, Switzerland

Gallery

File:003_ysp-hall.jpg, ''Wide Passage'' - Yorkshire Sculpture Park File:Sculpture at Schoenthal-hall 025.jpg, ''Spring'' - Sculpture at Schoenthal File:006_ysp-hall.jpg, ''Crossing (Vertical)'' - Yorkshire Sculpture Park File:Mannheim Kunsthalle Nigel Hall Slow Motion 2.jpg, ''Slow Motion'' - Mannheim

Selected literature

* ''Nigel Hall: Sculpture and Drawings'', exh, cat., Annely Juda Fine Art, London, 1978 * ''Nigel Hall: Skulpturen und Zeichnungen'', exh. cat., Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany, 1982 * ''Nigel Hall: Hidden Valleys'', exh. cat., Kunsthalle Mannheim, Germany, 2004 * ''Nigel Hall: Other Voices, Other Rooms'', exh. Cat., Galerie Scheffel, Bad Homburg vor der Höhe, Germany, 2007 * Andrew Lambirth: ''Nigel Hall - Sculpture and Works on Paper''. Royal Academy Books, London, 2008. - (The text is drawn from transcriptions of interviews with the artist recorded by Andrew Lambirth for the "Artist's Lives" project for the "National Life Stories". The British Library) * ''Nigel Hall: Chinese Whispers'', exh. cat., Galerie Andresthalmann, Zürich, 2010

References

External links

Biographical details

Nigel Hall: Sculpture + Drawings 1965 – 2008 at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hall, Nigel 1943 births Living people People educated at Bristol Grammar School 20th-century British sculptors 21st-century British sculptors English sculptors English male sculptors Royal Academicians Artists from Bristol