Shortlisted Artists
Below are the details of the four short-listed artists, one of whom will be selected to create the lasting memorial to Percy Bysshe Shelley in Horsham. Scroll down to find out more about each. They have been listed in alphabetical order:
David A Annand
In 1948, I was born “at the back o’ Bennachie” in Aberdeenshire and at the age of seven we left the idyllic town of Insch and moved to Perth where, having spoken Doric (strong Aberdeenshire accent and language) I had to learn English. Perth, at that time was booming and was a great place to grow up. I went to Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee and following an extra year’s post diploma award I was invited to stay on as a tutor in sculpture for a further year. I then taught in an inner city secondary school for a further 14 years and this proved invaluable when it comes to engaging with students for the community involvement aspect of public art commissions.
After this I became a freelance sculptor and ‘house husband’ doing the school run. That was in 1988 and I have been at ‘it’ ever since working anywhere in the UK and the Island of Ireland with work exported to Germany and the USA
From the outset, I tried to commission and use living poet’s work on my sculpture where it is digitally bead blasted onto the stainless-steel element. This makes the public linger longer with the piece and it also adds value and a new dimension to the overall composition.
The Broadbent Studio
Stephen Broadbent leads the team. His background is as a sculptor and maker being trained by the Liverpool sculptor Arthur Dooley. He is fundamentally a communicator and creative enabler who believes the ultimate success of any artwork will be its ability to endure beyond those who participated in its making. He is a member of the Royal Society of British Sculptors & has recently been awarded a Doctor of Fine Arts by Chester University. Stephen continues to demonstrate a role where artists can be radically engaged in the community, finding solutions, selecting and also interpreting themes that enlarge and enlighten our experience of the world.
Peter Davidson collaborates on projects from initial concept development onwards, bringing with him a particular emphasis on research and the written word.
Lucy Gannon is a designer and maker who shares her time between Broadbent Studio and Manchester School of Art where she works as a Senior Lecturer, and Programme Leader in Interior Design. Lucy originally trained as an Interior designer and adds to the team a strong understanding of spatial design with an emphasis on people and their relation to place and activity.
Their website is www.broadbent.studio
Vincent Gray
Born in Cheam, Surrey in 1959 and educated in the UK and Sweden, Vincent also spent time in his early years in Australia. Vincent’s mother was a Pitman Typist and his father an ex Merchant Seaman. Vincent was encouraged by his mother to draw and paint. His early creative influences stem from his grandmother, a student of Leeds Art School and a contemporary of Henry Moore.
He has been married to his Swedish wife for over forty years and lived in Sweden for periods during the 80s and 90s when he attended KV Art School, Gothenburg.
With wide industrial experience, Vincent has worked in television, theatre, design and manufacturing. He has worked alongside some notable and highly regarded names in the arts, engineering, military and entertainment both in the UK and in Sweden. His work has introduced him to many leading lights and free thinkers, which he says, ‘do not fail to inspire and influence’.
For 13 years he worked as Technical Assistant to Royal Sculptor Philip Jackson. Within this capacity, he was involved in numerous high profile arts projects for domestic and international markets.
In 2000 he was commissioned by ocean rower and adventurer John Ridgway to produce bronze portraits of both he and his wife Marie-Christine Ridgway for their School of Adventure in Ardmore, North West Scotland. In the same year, he was elected member of the Royal British Society of Sculptors. Since then he has completed a number of high-profile commissions including the life-size sculpture of John Keats which was unveiled in Chichester by Dame Patricia Routledge in 2017 and the Admiral Nelson and Sir George Murray Sculpture unveiled in Chichester city centre by Admiral Sir George Zambellas in 2021.
Vincent's website is www.vincentgray.co.uk
Rob Ward
Rob Ward is a fellow of the Royal Society of Sculptors, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is a board member of the European Sculpture Network.. His commissioned work is in Italy, Germany, China, U.S.A, Taiwan and the UK .He was Principal Lecturer, and Head of the Centre for Sculpture at Bretton Hall, University of Leeds from 1989 – 2009.Professor of Sculpture University of Huddersfield 2009-2016 Work can be viewed at www.robwardsculpture.co.uk , as can a full and complete CV.Reflections , a book of 40 years of work has been published by Making Space and Yale University Press publishers in 2009. He has made work and exhibited worldwide, including 21st century British sculpture exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in Venice, and as representative of the UK in Scultura Internationale in Turin Italy.with David Nash and Peter Randall Page. He held a retrospective exhibition at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds in 1989, and will this year show work at Shanghai Sculpture Park. China. He recorded his life story for the British Library Artist lives project in 2019 in conjunction with the Henry Moore Institute.
Rob writes: I am a sculptor of longstanding. My work emanates from the studio and concerns itself with a reflective practice which seeks to relate ideas of space and time to place. My work is a meditation on the relationship of the 2 dimensional to the 3, and often uses drawing in relation to sculpture. Objects Poetry , Music and Literature are sources of subject matterMy large scale commissioned work extends this by using drawing in space and reflective material to gain a sense of presence and involvement from the spectator. Light and movement are visual tools I use to generate the context of place I seek to create .To this end I have exhibited widely and been commissioned to make work for places ranging from Sculpture Parks to major developments... In 2016 I created a House in Spain to House my work , and to establish a Residency for artists and schools to work and study.My work is inclusive. I use a diverse range of processes materials and techniques.
