Families used a range of materials to make their own sausages interesting, personalised, furry and even glittery before taking them home to keep. This activity contributed to the decoration of the Artists’ Studio, with inspirational images and sausage research being pinned up on the walls, accumulating as the weeks went by.
Eric Bainbridge presented a series of new works made from reclaimed steel and other more incongruous materials, drawing himself closer to the modernist abstraction of the 1950s and ‘60s embodied by sculptors David Smith and Anthony Caro.
The sculptures extend his practice of collage, combining both formal and unexpected elements and reveal the duality which has run throughout his career.
Bainbridge has always been interested in the surface of things and previous sculptural works have incorporated materials such as fake fur and wood-effect melamine. Often described as kitsch, his preferred materials are found in second hand shops, scrap metal yards and DIY stores; his sculptures reconsider the value of the readily available and cheap. He has blown objects up to outsize proportions, covered them and piled them up in a variety of balancing acts. Bainbridge incorporates multiple components and reference points, including concepts and inspiration from art history and today’s cultural field.
Working across a wide array of media spanning video, installation and collage, Bainbridge’s interests continuously expand to absorb society’s constant changes in style, thought, fashion and taste.
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