Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, June 8, 2022: Nigel Hall RA, an English sculptor and a draughtsman (#1590)

Nigel Hall RA (1943) is an English sculptor and a draughtsman.
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, Bristol from 1960 to 1964 and at the Royal College of Art, London from 1964 to 1967. A Harkness Fellowship 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.

He was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in 2003.

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 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 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, Canberra (1982), and his largest sculpture, a free-standing steel work at the entrance to the Thameslink tunnel, London, 1993.

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 Mojave desert. 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.
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