Image: a piece from Like a Glacier Moving Through You, 2016

Lionel Bawden’s latest exhibition Dawn Chorus opened at the Karen Woodbury Gallery in Melbourne this week. Bawden is a consummate artist and this latest offering is rich in concept, detail and execution.

Lionel Bawden’s ‘The Wild’, 2016

This new series of works is the culmination of Bawden’s experience and echo his fascination with landscape, the contours of rock formations and mountain pools. Each sculpture is detailed and refined with a dialogue of its own that speaks of terrain and territory, geography and space.

Lionel Bawden’s ‘To Walk the Earth To Feel the Earth’, 2016

There are 10 sculptures on display and size varies from the intimate work And the World Opens Up 2015 to the expansive Like a Glacier Moving Through You 2016. The stand-alone work Something that Resonates 2014 is the only sculpture that is shown to best advantage on a plinth, and this allows the viewer to physically enjoy the three-dimensional quality of Bawden’s work.

Lionel Bawden’s ‘Something That Resonates’, 2014

Working with Staedtler pencils, epoxy, incralac and metal, Bawden creates wondrous forms that embrace a simplicity of structure combined with a complexity of vision. As the artist comments, “I create objects where the duration of engagement is carried in the physical object with some resonance or echo of the labour held within the work”.

Lionel Bawden’s ‘The Skin of the Earth’, 2016

This is an exhibition to allay the senses and marvel at technique, where beauty of form reigns supreme.

Lionel Bawden’s exhibition Dawn Chorus is now showing at the Karen Woodbury Gallery from 9 March to 9 April 2016.

karenwoodburygallery.com