‘Winter Pride‘ London in 2014

Winter Pride Highlights video (4 min) by Ben Mourra:
www.youtube.com/embed/7HoojWnutdA?
winterpride-logo


David-Begbie-Winter-Pride-2014

Winter Pride Indoor Party at Tobacco Docks, London
London will be playing host to its first Winter Pride on 8 February 2014 - a new mid-Winter festival for gay London, Winter Pride at the capital’s Tobacco Dock (http://tobaccodocklondon.com/): a historic location between Tower Hill and Wapping that has now been transformed into a major exhibitions space.
Winter Pride will seek to bring together the biggest LGBT club brands and international DJs for a real winter warmer of a party, a fully enclosed, indoor event. It won’t just be about dancing and clubbing, though. The event will also boast a market and community area, and a highlight of the day will be the The Winter Pride UK Awards.

The first ever Winter Pride includes not only an art competition for emerging artists but a breathtaking exhibition of installation art and sculpture from a diverse group of international artists.I am happy to be invited showing NUUDIS and other mesh sculpture at the Awards room!

Read my interview:
Could you describe your creative process?

My sculpture is a celebration of the human form. I create contemporary archetypal images of masculine and feminine whereby each contains elements of the other in varying degrees.
Each sculpture is of a unique human physical presence. This easily describes my individual single-figure artworks. With compositions of more than one, through a simple juxtaposition of individual characters complex relationships emerge. The integration of these physical personalities created together in a singular material as twos, threes, fours and so on result in compositions leaving the viewer to interpret the nature of the relationships contained within each artwork.
Between the various male and female characters which comprise each composition the tensions and harmonies which exist and develop within the material itself as the sculpture is formed act as an analogy for exactly those dynamics which are to be found in all human relationships on every level of interaction.
I then use simple strategic lighting to project a shadow of my three-dimensional rendition onto the wall or surface behind to create a spectacular compositional fusion of light, line and form.


Which media do you prefer to work with and why?

The medium I use is quite unique, I use industrial metal mesh / steel and bronze. The material itself is very sensitive and like on a canvas any mark or distortion in the machined regularity of its fabric is capable of expressing intention and purpose. This material is virtually invisible and in the physical sense hardly exists at all and yet, when used to create with, is phenomenally powerful and evocative. Essentially I am drawing in three-dimensional space and each spacial delineation has a greater palpable presence than any solid object could possibly have, as it has the power to suggest that it doesn't even actually exist at all. Very similar to an apparition.


What do you intend the audience to take away from your works?

First and for most a sense of surprise and of course, inspiration! I like to make images of ourselves for ourselves so something unforgettable.


Do you have a favourite artwork and could you tell us about it?

An artist who's sculpture I found to be of great inspiration from very early on is Auguste Rodin. Even the simplest of his human studies such as "Torso of a young Girl" is so powerfully and emotionally charged with life and movement his joyous and evocative response to simple beauty and physical existence is beautiful and timeless. He is also the first truly modern sculptor who understood how relics and fragments from antiquity affected our notions of the nature of classical forms, which have come to be seen by us as an aesthetic norm without the realisation of the expressive power which exists and is contained within broken forms. He was the first to deliberately fragment and truncate and present his images to us as finished works of art. Most of my sculptures are either truncated or partial figures.


What do you find most challenging about being an artist?

To be an artist is a way of seeing and a way of life. The challenge is in maintaining the delicate balance between matters of self-expression and all of the other things that don't really matter at all!


What are you most looking forward to at Winter Pride UK 2014?

I'm impressed that Winter Pride has chosen to place a strong and important emphasis and focus on the creative and visual arts as a whole. I am looking forward to seeing the results of this initiative and the coming together of all of the various positive and uplifting creative forces in what promises to be a truly spectacular event. I'm also looking forward to a great party!


David Begbie a.r.b.s. January 2014