Medium
Comemporative Abstract Memorial sculpture, Public Commission Urban statue by John Atkin, who elaborates…
“This was an opportunity to make a sculpture that relates to the anniversary of W. W. 1.
The “Great War” was “a war to end all wars” and it was also a period of history where human ingenuity invented all manner of technology that was a fusion of man & machine. These inventions contributed to the annihilation of over 9 million soldiers and 7 million civilians in one of the deadliest conflicts in human history.
This merging of man & machine is central to the understanding of Atkin’s sculpture, Mechanomorphic Figure, because it is at one and the same time “human” but also a machine, which also has references to Mary Shelly’s seminal novel “Modern Prometheus”, which was written a century earlier.
Atkin visited Sono Felice (South Korea) in August for the first time, and was impressed by the beauty of the region and its undulating landscape. The mountainous countryside permitted unique views onto valleys and lowlands, which was the perfect setting for his sculpture; a sentinel, machine-like figure.
The component parts of Atkin’s sculpture are derived from everyday objects that have a scale & volume that relate to one another. These forms are derived from early 20th Century agricultural implements associated with farming, which is again appropriate to the historical heritage of the countryside surrounding Sono Felice. These agricultural discs, levers and pulleys contribute to the formal composition of the sculpture. The head of the sculpture originated from a mould of an industrial shovel: the wheels of the sculpture are prompted from studies I made of tractor machinery: and grinding wheels inspires the winding gear located at the front of the artwork.
“Mechanomorphic Figure” also has undertones of science fiction, and a post-holocaust paranoia that has dogged modern society since the “Cold War” to the present day. This fear is reflected in films such as “Mad Max” and “Blade Runner “where mortality is replaced by automatons, and survival depends on the fusion of human and machine.
Atkin’s sculpture I made from a combination of the new and the old: Bronze is a material redolent of past industries and aluminium is contemporary in nature and forward thinking.
Artist Comment
Mechanomorphic Figure (Metal Constrcuted Large Contemporary sculpture)
by John Atkin
£133,333
Since leaving the RCA in London, where Henry Moore personally funded Atkin throughout his MA sculpture course, he has exhibited…
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