History, Monuments and Our Present Moment with Kenny Hunter

Lucy: Hello Sculpture Vultures, and thank you for joining me today.

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been working up in Port Sunlight, and this week I’ve been working in and around London. It’s actually been quite a nice stretch of work because it’s been focused on reviewing and tracking the condition of some quite difficult statues—and this is honestly one of the loveliest parts of my job.

It’s a little bit like being a GP in the old days, where a doctor might have continuity of care for their patients throughout their lives—through the difficult patches, the good and the bad—and hopefully be able to intervene when necessary.

I don’t think that’s how the NHS works anymore, at least not in my experience—I can’t seem to see the same GP twice in a row. Maybe I’m just unlucky, but I suspect many people have had similar frustrations.

Anyway, what I get to do in this role is to come back to a sculpture after treatments have been done or maintenance has been carried out, and review how things are progressing.

Sometimes it’s about tweaking the treatment plan, adjusting the routines. And sometimes—it’s just glorious. You go back and see a statue that’s stable and flourishing in its environment. And when you remember that it was originally brought to your attention because it was completely out of sync with its setting, changing so rapidly that everyone was panicking—well, seeing that progress is just the best feeling.

It’s about being there for the long haul—reviewing, reflecting, and using a light touch to keep the object in equilibrium with its surroundings. I absolutely love that kind of work, and I’ve been lucky enough to indulge in it over the past couple of weeks.

Next week, I’m off to Nottinghamshire, where I’ll be working on the Robin Hood and Maid Marian statue, which has sadly been vandalised. It’s been pulled about a bit and needs some careful restoration to reconnect broken elements.

That job is much less about conservation and much more about restoration—putting things back to how they were. Still, it’s really interesting, and I do love working on icons like Robin Hood and Maid Marian. They’ve had so much mythology and cultural significance built around them, and it’s always exciting to play a small part in that ongoing story.

Before we get cracking with today’s show, I wanted to mention a little article that caught my eye. It was in The Guardian, titled: “A Cultural Embarrassment: Controversy Over Male Sculptor for Female Suffragette Statue.”

This article is all about the upcoming Elsie Inglis statue. Elsie Inglis was a Scottish suffragist and health pioneer, and she’s finally going to be commemorated with a monument on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. She’ll be the only female commemorated on that stretch, so this is a really significant moment for women in public sculpture.

Now, the statue project started to attract criticism back in 2022, when the charity that raised the funds for it launched an open design competition, only to shut it down a few weeks before the final decision. They then announced that they had already chosen a sculptor.

Eyebrows were raised. It does seem a very odd thing to do—though I’m sure the charity had their reasons. I’m not really here to comment on the administrative side of it, though I’ll admit I don’t like the way it was handled.

What’s really got under my skin, though, is less about the open call being cancelled, and more about the debate that followed. Some feminist voices have argued that women’s stories should only be told through the female gaze, and that a male sculptor shouldn’t be allowed to make a statue of a woman.

This is not a new debate, of course—it’s been going on for a long time. But I have to say, I’m increasingly irritated by the exclusionary logic of that position. I believe that art transcends the identity of its creator—or it should. A powerful story should be told, no matter the gender, ethnicity, or background of the person telling it.

Yes, I completely understand the frustration about the legacy of male-dominated narratives, particularly in public sculpture. But I don’t think that justifies us creating new boundaries around who is “allowed” to tell certain stories.

I think it’s patronising, frankly. And I think it’s unscientific in some ways. I mean, there are so many examples in art where women have created from the male perspective, and vice versa, and they’ve done it really well. I’m not going to stand on my soapbox any further about it, but I am going to say this: I’ve written an article on Substack about the topic. If you fancy hearing more of my rants, please come and join me over there.

I’m not giving you the same thing on Substack that I give you in this podcast—the writing there is much more personal, more like the roundups I put in at the end of interviews with sculptors. It’s my own take on things, and I talk more about where my opinions and perspectives come from.

So, if you like a bit of that—if you like a bit of opinionated writing—come on over to Substack. I don’t charge for any of my writing over there, just like I don’t charge for the podcast either. I do it for the love of it. It’s just nice to have an audience.

So come over, subscribe—I’d love to see you there.

Today on the show, I’m speaking to Kenny Hunter, who is both a sculptor of monumental public works and a studio artist whose work is exhibited in galleries. He’s an interesting fellow, fascinated by history, the human condition, and human culture across large swathes of time—and he explores how those things often clash.

He recently won the Marsh Award for Excellence in Sculpture for his Covid monument in Edinburgh, which is an excellent piece. But he also has public works in so many places—I’ll mention just a few here (definitely not a full list): you’ll find them in London, Glasgow, North Berwick, Leicestershire—they’re all over the country. Do check if there’s one in your area.

© Kenny Hunter – iGoat, Aluminium, paint & concrete. 2011, Spitalfields, London

I began our conversation today by asking:

Lucy: When did you first discover your love of sculpture?

Kenny: It was clay. The feeling of clay in my hand. Yeah. As a boy, I guess I was a classic Scottish school kid—insofar as I was discouraged away from art. Because it’s seen as so… what’s the word? Unreliable. Flaky. It doesn’t fit well within the Scottish psyche.

So art as a career was viewed with suspicion, I would say. Maybe that’s changed now, but it certainly was when I was growing up. I begged my parents to let me do Higher Art—we have “Highers” in Scotland instead of A-Levels—but they said no. They wanted me to do something like Physics, which I’ve never been good at.

Eventually we reached a compromise—I got to do O Grade Art in my Higher year, which is a lower qualification. But it meant I got to work with clay, and that’s when everything changed.

You’ll know the feeling—it’s like time takes on a different shape. You lose yourself in the process and in the relationship you build with the material. There’s this sense of wholeness, where you’re not thinking about the past or the future. You’re just in the moment.

That’s what art can give you. It’s about surface, volume, mass—all the physical qualities: gravity, materiality, all the things that make sculpture the language it is. I just got hooked. The other subject I really loved at school was History, and that has stayed with me too. That interest in history is definitely a big feature of my work.

Through history, I found my way into the pre-modern era of sculpture. I’ve always looked at the Egyptians, the Greeks, just as much as I’ve looked at Pop Art, Surrealism, or Postmodernism.

It’s all part of the same stew I draw from. I include it all in my “soup,” if you like. But I really do feel connected to the art of the past, just as much as I do to what’s happening now.

Lucy: So is that where you draw inspiration from—history? Or does inspiration strike you more in day-to-day life?

Kenny: No, I’d say it is history—but not just in the academic sense. I mean how it physically manifests in sculpture, which is through monuments. Memorials. Statues.

That’s an incredibly rich tradition, and one that’s gone through a modern re-evaluation. I’ve always had a kind of love-hate relationship with monuments. I can see their misuse, but also their splendour. I can see how they misrepresent history—and yet, they can also bring a site into sharp focus with one powerful image.

They’re complex things.

People often talk about monuments as if they’re obsolete, ignored, or forgotten. They stand on their pedestals and no one knows who they are. But look at what happened in 2020—with the George Floyd protests, suddenly the subject of monuments became central to public discourse.

That moment made everyone stop and debate what represents us, who we are, and how we’re represented in public space. I find that enduringly fascinating. And I want to do my take on it.

I think of all my work as a kind of conversation between what is now and what has always been. I’m always looking for those feedback loops—themes of belonging, of identity, and of how the past informs the present. Because the past isn’t really “past,” is it? It shapes where we are right now.

From School to Sculpting Career

Lucy: Taking you back a step, were you working straight out of college or did you do something else before you decided to become a sculptor?

Kenny: Yeah, I did—and I would recommend that to any younger listeners. Take some time out before you fully commit.

It’s about getting your passion into your work. If you can make a living doing something you care deeply about, you can put up with the unreliability of income—or the lack of income—because you’re totally connected to it. You become indivisible from your labour.

So yeah, I left school and did various jobs—building sites, pub work, hospital porter. I was a hospital porter back in Edinburgh while I built up my portfolio at the Education Centre in Edinburgh. I applied to Edinburgh College of Art, which was my local art school, and Glasgow was my second choice.

And I got into Glasgow—not Edinburgh. Weirdly, that turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me. It got me out of my little mouse trail, you know? That kind of rut. As a young person, you’re stimulated by new contexts, and going to Glasgow was a massive change. It might not seem far, but it was transformative.

I collided with a really interesting moment in art history. I was there from 1983 to 1987, right in between the wave of highly successful figurative painters—like Ken Currie and Stephen Campbell—and the next wave of incredible conceptual artists who went on to win Turner Prizes and really put Glasgow on the map.

So it was like a crucible. And I think as artists, we all benefit from those moments in history when we’re lifted up. When your colleagues are ambitious or taking risks, doing exciting things—it rubs off.

It’s kind of random, but I really believe whoever shows up in your year at art school can have a huge impact on you as a developing artist. I was lucky. I had to figure out a path between these movements. I always wanted to be a representational artist, someone who made things—but I also looked up to conceptual artists as models for how to engage with the here and now.

So I’ve always tried to blend different approaches, and I think that’s where the most exciting work comes from—hybridity. Mixing things in a way that hasn’t been presented like that before.

Lucy: And so work followed—work in sculpture—after college, did it?

Kenny: As soon as I graduated, I got a job as a technician in the woodwork department at Glasgow School of Art. A member of staff had taken ill, and I filled in for a bit.

I used that opportunity—it gave me access to space, and space is everything for a sculptor. Having a decent studio setup is huge. I got that going, built a new body of work, and then applied for a residency in Athens, Greece.

That was in 1990, which was a big year for Glasgow—it was the European Capital of Culture. Glasgow invited artists from abroad to come and exhibit, and also sent artists like me out into other parts of Europe. I got the trip to Greece, which was perfect for me.

And again, I had quite naïve ideas at the time about Arcadia, classicism, and all that. But when I got out there, I saw the fragments, the pieces of the past, but also a contemporary city struggling with overcrowding, pollution—but also vibrant and exciting.

I got to rub shoulders with historians, geographers, and others who were deeply immersed in past cultures—and they taught me a lot. They really helped me understand the subjectivity of history, and how there’s no single reliable version of it.

That experience shaped my thinking. I came away with this idea that I wanted to create monuments or sculptures that were ambiguous, rather than those that scream certainty or take strident positions. A lot of monuments are built like that—very certain, very direct. But I became fascinated by the idea of making monumental sculptures that were more open.

© Kenny Hunter – Citizen Firefighter, Bronze. 2001, Central Station, Glasgow

Lucy: So your work is quite distinctive. Particularly, a lot of your outdoor pieces use that very distinctive green patina—one that a lot of people associate with classical sculptures. Is that something you feel strongly about? Has it become part of your identity as a sculptor, or is it just the right finish for those particular monuments?

Kenny: You mean the patinated finish?

Lucy: Yeah.

Kenny: I mean, I’m not exclusively into green! I’ve used other colours too—I’ve used red oxide, like an iron oxide. I’ve used liver of sulphur for a black patina, like I did with the black sculpture in Glasgow.

But yeah, I guess the thing with the verdigris green is it speaks of time, doesn’t it? It suggests exposure, and it gives you this beautiful verticality, these streaks that move over the surface. Especially on organic forms—it’s just lovely to watch.

But it’s hard to replicate artificially. You can try to torch it on with chemicals, but the best versions often come from waiting. Just letting time do the work.

Lucy: It’s a great colour if you are handing your piece over to a client to look after, because actually it matures very well. Whereas lots of colours that artists want—like a beautiful piece outside in the middle of urban London, and it’s yellow—and I’m thinking, do you know how hard that poor client… how much money that poor client’s going to have to spend to maintain that yellow? Because it’s just not very chemically stable.

Whereas I look at your pieces and I think they’re a dream—for somebody who’s going to be a custodian.

Kenny: Yeah, that’s true. You’re absolutely right. But the thing is, in a way… you’ll notice there’s such an energy and excitement around the arrival of a sculpture. There’s all this anticipation. And then, once it’s up, people move on a little.

But I always try to say to people—it’s like buying a house. You can’t expect to never maintain it. Or a car—it’s the same thing. You’ve got to be in it for the long haul. And this is the amazing thing: a work of art out in public is constantly communicating—365 days a year. It’s quietly dripping into people’s consciousness.

You can have something explosive—a sporting event, for instance—and it captures the moment, but then everyone moves on.

The Theatrical Quality of Public Sculpture

Whereas sculpture, it’s just there. I see them like phantoms, looking down on the city or being part of it. their audiences are, I guess, a gaze, aren’t they? Somebody gazes at it for a moment and then moves on and somebody else looks at it. But this is just an ongoing situation.

Lucy: I always see it like a theatre—you’ve got the performers, and usually the audience are looking at them. But with public sculpture, the items are static, and the audience—the world around them—is having their own little stories all around the sculpture.
There’s something theatrical about that, and I just love it.

Kenny: Yeah, exactly. And the scale thing’s important too, isn’t it? That life-size or slightly over-life-size scale—it creates intimacy and believability. You can still make big monuments that are impressive, but for me, they lose some of their humanity with scale.

Have you ever had that moment in your studio—dim lighting, different atmosphere—and you catch something out of the corner of your eye, a sculpture, and for a split second your brain thinks someone is standing behind you? It’s primal—a fight-or-flight response, deeply rooted in us. And that’s what sculpture can do. It shares space with us in a way that painting just doesn’t.

Painting is illusion—a flat surface tricking you into seeing three dimensions. But sculpture? It’s real. It’s there, in your space.

And when it’s life-sized, or just slightly larger, we can project onto it. We imbue it with an inner life. Especially still sculptures. A still figure has believability. When a figure is in mid-action—throwing something, kicking a ball—you know it’s an object. But when it’s quiet, contemplative, a thinker or a standing figure, then we believe in it more.

Lucy: And I think because people are so seldom still these days—everyone’s frantic, rushing about—there’s something in that calm, that stillness, that draws people in.
We all want that. We crave that moment of peace, but it’s so elusive.

Kenny: I think you’re really onto something there. There’s such a lack of calmness in people’s daily lives—so many distractions, all the time.

And sculpture is a slow art form. You know this. It takes time, attention, concentration—and I think people see that. They can sense the time it took. There’s a direct relationship between the time you spent making it and the time they will spend engaging with it.

If a piece was months of work, people will stand with it. Spend time. You can tell when something was rushed—it just doesn’t hold people in the same way.

Now, I’m not against contemporary art at all—I love it. But it’s just a different method of consumption, isn’t it?

For example, text-based pieces—I do those too sometimes. A text sculpture can deliver a question or an ambiguous statement that really affects your intellect. But it doesn’t always hit you emotionally the way a figure can.

Lucy: Well, I think as well, there’s something about sculpture that makes you fill in the story that you’re not seeing come next. In a book, the story is laid out, right? There’s a narrative. In videos, which everyone’s watching on their phones, the story unfolds across time. But with sculpture… I kind of feel like it’s actually closer to poetry than any other art form.

Because with poetry, everything is distilled—pared back—and sculpture is even more so. You’re invited to fill in the next moment. And everybody’s next moment is different.

There’s also something about being in a gallery, where there’s people jostling you and you’re a bit squashed, that makes you move on quite quickly. But outdoors, with public sculpture, you’ve got space. People generally aren’t jostling you. You’re able to stop in a way you can’t with other types of art.

For me, that’s a really big part of it. And I think with your works particularly—they’re quite accessible. They’re often people we know, not grand politicians or historical figures that no one really understands. They’re much more relatable.

Kenny: Mm-hmm. And what you’re saying about the unknowability of the work—the way people bring their own interpretation to it—that’s really supported by this ambiguity.

It’s this idea of the pregnant moment—the figure about to do something, rather than a figure in explosive action. When it’s just about to act, each viewer can imagine the next part of the story differently. It gives the figure agency.

It’s like getting the joke just before you laugh. You don’t really want to sculpt someone laughing—you want to sculpt that split second before it. That moment when an idea has just occurred, the light going on in the head. That’s a good moment to capture.

There’s something in a slight turn of the head, or a shift of the eyes, that suggests something’s about to happen.

Also, that coiled energy—like with the classical contrapposto. The feet one way, hips the other, the head turning another way—it creates that sculptural twist and tension. That kind of figure always interests me.

I think of that famous Maillol sculpture of the European woman—she’s kneeling, one leg tucked under, one elbow on her knee with her hand on her head, the other hand planted on the ground. It all loops. Her pose creates this beautiful rotational flow—a kind of knot of energy.

And there’s a strong vertical line in her arm, anchoring the form. It’s a reminder: sculpture is about form as well as subject. It’s not just about storytelling—it’s the sculptural language that matters too. If that’s well considered, people will spend longer looking—not just at what it represents, but at how it works.

© Kenny Hunter – The Unknown, Iron, 2012. Borgie Forest, Sutherland

Lucy: So what’s the best bit for you? Is it the initial idea? The refining of it? Where’s the bit that really gives you the buzz?

Kenny: I’d say… there are two real peaks of contentment in making art. But let’s be honest—most of the time, it’s frustrating. You never quite get what you imagined. Whatever you finish, there’s always part of you thinking, ah, it’s not quite right.

And then everybody else is saying, oh, it’s brilliant! and you’re sitting there thinking, no, no it’s not…

Lucy: And you try not to focus on that—because you don’t want to draw everyone’s attention to it!

Kenny: You don’t—but, no, it bugs you.

I guess I do love research. I love the coming together of an idea, where you can fold in meanings and historical references and work out how all these elements can come together to create a good artwork, a good sculpture.

Then there’s that phase where you start putting clay on the armature, and it feels like, “How is this ever going to come together?” There’s that self-doubt. You’re pushing through all that ego, all that uncertainty.

Then there’s the moment it starts to resemble what you thought might emerge. And you feel this release of anxiety—“Yes, this is going to work out.” Eventually, you get to the final piece and you think, “Yeah, that’s good. I’ve given everything I’ve got.” And you know if you keep going, you’ll only make it worse. So you stop. Step away. Let the mould maker do their thing.

You can still manipulate a little in the wax, a little in the bronze, but really, it’s the clay where all the major decisions get made. Your tolerances are tighter in wax and metal—there’s less room to play.

Art-making feels like walking up a mountain—you think you’ve reached the peak, but then you realise there’s another one just ahead. I’m not saying it’s always frustrating. It’s just that it renews itself. And the next idea becomes the thing that keeps you going.

Lucy: Yeah, I’ve gotta say that my confidence goes when I have that—because, you know, I’m gonna equate it to writing. I’m writing something and like you say, with the lumpy clay where you can’t really see how it’s going to come together… For me, it’s like a rollercoaster. I drop right down and think: “I’m hopeless. There’s no point. This is terrible.” And then suddenly, something shifts. And I’m excited again.

The energy returns, and I start to build momentum and feel like, “This is going somewhere, I can see where it’s going.” And I’m not sure I’d get the highs without the lows.

But for me, there’s definitely a lot of, like, self-talk. “You can do this. It’s not that you can’t—it’s just part of the process.” Especially with a long project, I have to remind myself: There’ll be downs as well as ups. How long would an average piece take you, do you reckon? Or is there even an average?

Kenny: Not really, but… maybe eight to twelve weeks in clay for a figure that’ll work.

And then sometimes I cast a polyester resin master copy. That gets worked on with sandpaper and files. And that, you mentioned earlier my relationship to classicism—that’s where it really comes in. Because with the resin, I’m literally sculpting reductively, removing material rather than adding it.

That feels like a connection to the classical world. I’m thinking more archaic classical than high classical sculpture. But that idea of editing form really resonates with me.

Lucy: Yeah.

Kenny: I almost think of myself as an editor of form. Like with drapery—there are certain folds that reveal the inner dynamics of the body: tension, stretching, movement. But there are also folds that just don’t behave well, visually. They’re not aesthetically pleasing. So I end up making my own version—removing, refining.

That’s reductive sculpture-making. It connects me to the long history of classical art, where that approach was a core part of the process.

Balancing Public Commissions and Studio Work

Lucy: You seem to have quite a wide variety within your sculpture. Do you feel like, after making a monument, you need to then cleanse your palette with something entirely different? Or is creating variety just as the moment takes you?

Kenny: That’s an interesting question—it could lead all sorts of ways. I think with public art, something comes to you, doesn’t it? Like with the Citizen Firefighter in Glasgow—that was the fire service asking me to represent their work. So it’s very different to the studio practice, where you’re following your own personal concerns as an artist within the white cube gallery context, rather than in an urban environment with a client who wants their organisation or institution represented.

So, as an artist, you’re sometimes taking on quite random things that come into your orbit. Suddenly you’re thinking about firefighters or healthcare workers—not necessarily things that you would have explored on your own. But it’s an incredible privilege. You meet all sorts of people. You form these little communities around the work, which might last six months or a year, while you’re working toward a particular outcome.

But what’s really crucial, Lucy, is that I’m also a studio artist. I exhibit in galleries. And a lot of public artists don’t do both, but I do. I like to keep both strands alive—because they feed each other.

Public art broadens me, helps me grow as a person. But showing work in a gallery helps me build a personal identity as an artist—free from outside influence. So when I do meet a public client, I’m bringing something well-developed to the table, with a clear flavour and point of view.

I’m working with a client in Edinburgh just now, and they really like that my work is traditional but not conventional. They’re an organisation made up of different antecedents coming together—so they want the monument to acknowledge the past, but not feel stuck in it. They want it to sit lightly on their present identity.

Lucy: So how does that work in practical terms—being a studio artist and doing public commissions? Are you blocking out time like, “Okay, 12 weeks for a public monument, then I’ll take 3 months for studio work?” Or are they all folding in on one another, running side by side?

Kenny: Yeah… I don’t think it’s tidy at all. As a sculptor, you’re always on the verge of catastrophe! The timescales, the overheads, the equipment—it’s a lot.

I’m lucky though. I’m embedded with Powderhall Bronze in Edinburgh. I’ve been working with the same foundry for 25, maybe 30 years. So I’m around other makers, people who care about the craft. That’s a huge support system.

I have a smaller studio where I can build up to life-size figures, and if I need to scale up, I can work on the shop floor at the foundry. But I think you have to be adaptable. It’s definitely chaotic. I don’t see it as a neat, ordered system at all.

Lucy: I’m so glad. I’m so glad—because I cannot for the life of me sort out an ordered schedule of creation. It seems like an impossibility! Nearly everything I do has to run in a big bundle—and like a horse race, one thing eventually pulls ahead. Usually because there’s a deadline looming…

Kenny: [Laughs] Yeah.

Lucy: …but all the parts of my life just gallop along together. Every time I try to sort them into tidy order, they just break free. They’re not having it!

Kenny: It’s like that—you’re probably too young for this—but remember that generation of the spinning plate guy?

Lucy: Oh yes! The plate-spinning guy!

Kenny: That’s what it feels like. You’re kind of like, “Well, this one’s about to go!” You’ve got to do something—stabilise it, keep it going.

I think in my favour, I’m a bit of a worrier. I tend to worry about outcomes, and that generates action. How do I cope with the worry? I do something about it—and that makes me feel like it’s under control again. So I try to work ahead of the deadline. I just can’t be one of those people who work right up to the wire—doing an all-nighter, finishing something off last minute. I always plan for the possibility that things might need to be redone.

Lucy: I always envied people that can do that—pull it off like that. I lived with someone at university who did their entire dissertation in one night and got a First.

Kenny: Oh God.

Lucy: And this was back in the day—this will show you how old I am—when you could still handwrite your final assignments! Word processing had just started, but not everyone had computers. They pulled off the whole thing in one night—absolutely brilliant.

I slaved for ages on mine, finished early, and still only got a 2:1. I know, I know—it’s still a 2:1—but when you compare the effort, it’s like… how did they do that?!

Kenny: Yeah, they can. Some people just have that gift.

Lucy: I would’ve had a heart attack doing that. It would’ve finished me off completely.

Lucy: Can you tell everybody where they can find out a little bit more about you, if they’d like to?

Kenny: Oh yeah—I’ve got a website. Off the top of my head, it’s www.kennyhunter.com, and I’ve got a lot of work represented across different websites as well. I think a simple Google search will throw up some other good leads if people want to explore further.

I also teach at Edinburgh College of Art, so there’s some of my work linked on their site too.

Lucy: Instagram—you’re on there too, aren’t you? Is that where people can see what you’re up to?

Kenny: Yeah—I’ve been a bit quiet on it recently, but I do use it. Some projects have embargoes or NDAs attached, so I can’t always post things right away. But I try to use my Instagram feed for process shots, finished work, and interesting things I see in the world. It’s not really about me personally.

I do think that format is a useful addition to how artists communicate. It gives you a bit of agency—a direct connection between the artist and the audience—and I think that’s a valuable thing.

Lucy: Yeah. Well, thank you very much for joining me today. I’ve really appreciated it.

Kenny: Thank you, Lucy—I’ve really, really enjoyed our chat.

Lucy’s Roundup

What stood out to me about Kenny is how much he thinks about public sculpture. He’s not just a doer—he’s almost a philosopher. I thought he articulated his feelings about monuments incredibly well, which shows that he spends a lot of time thinking about these issues.

Please remember that my guests don’t get their questions ahead of time, so they don’t know specifically what I’m going to ask them. And so I felt he described that love–hate relationship with monuments and the classical tradition incredibly well. He can see its misuse and its splendour, as he put it—which has led him to create traditional works, but not conventional ones. I think his sculpture acknowledges the past without being burdened by it. It’s very clever.

I also liked his take on the timelessness of public sculpture—when he talked about how concerts and sporting events capture a single moment in time and then their audiences move on. But Kenny sees sculpture as like phantoms looking down on the city—artworks that are communicating continuously, and gradually seeping into the public consciousness. They’re ever-present. And I’ve always felt that… without being able to articulate it. So I am very thankful to Kenny now that he has put those words in my mouth.

Kenny’s preference is for sculpture to be still, rather than action-packed—and I think that was a lovely contrast to someone like Sabin Howard, who we had on the show a few weeks ago, who is all motion and go-go-go. They are both creative giants in their own ways, but really at completely different poles. And that’s actually amazing—to see two people grappling with the same subject in entirely different ways. That’s the wonder of the creative mind.

There’s something about Kenny’s calm, contemplative figures that really draws people in. Perhaps they offer a counterpoint to our frantic and distracted lives. At least, I feel that way—and I’m sure many others do too.

Kenny noted that sculpture is a slow art form. And I have to say, it’s quite rare for someone to come on the show and present me with an idea about sculpture that I’ve never thought of before—but he did just that. His ideas about how, in this fast-paced world of content consumption, there’s something profoundly valuable about art that asks us to slow down, to think about what’s being said, and to find our own meaning in that stillness… it struck me really hard.

Because I now wonder whether that is one of the reasons I’m so drawn to sculpture.

One of the movements I embraced much earlier in my life was the Slow Movement. Some of you might laugh, because my life doesn’t look slow—it really isn’t—but the idea of “slow” totally transformed my way of thinking.

I think it was Carl Honoré’s book In Praise of Slow, around 2004, that really shifted things for me. It completely transformed my life, because I needed something to help me cope with the busyness of life—in all its many facets. That book was like a calibration tool. It helped me re-centre.

At that time, I had started suffering from really vivid dreams—often of me driving a car incredibly fast and crashing into a wall. It was awful. The same dream, over and over again. And I think what it was really saying is: I was out of control. Everything was too much, and I felt like I couldn’t stop it.

So—long before COVID came along and gave people a taste of “slow” through furloughs and lockdowns—I began to say no. For both myself and my kids. I said no to birthday parties—unless it was a bosom friend. No to endless after-school clubs—they could pick one, and stick with it. I systematically reduced our weekly calendar by about 90%.

And I did the same in my work life. I started to focus on what I felt I could do brilliantly—and said no to anything else, even when it seemed exciting.

This wasn’t because I had something specific I wanted to replace it with. It was simply that I didn’t want every waking second to be filled. I wasn’t sitting around cross-legged, staring at my navel—I just didn’t want that constant noise.

Now, remember—I had three young children at the time. So even our quiet days weren’t exactly quiet. But through this slowing down, I started to become more creative. The ideas started bubbling up again. I spent more time thinking about sculpture—not just doing the work, but contemplating it. Being mesmerised by it. It drew me in more than ever before.

So when Kenny said sculpture is a slow art form—maybe that’s exactly why it resonated so deeply. Because it fits so perfectly with what I was looking for in life at that time.

And because it’s outdoors—I’m very outdoorsy—that aligned perfectly too. Sculpture doesn’t shout. It doesn’t demand. It’s peaceful. And that’s what I was craving.

That’s probably why Kenny’s words spoke so profoundly to me in this episode.

Please Support the Show

Please support the show by buying one of my books. This week, I’d love to encourage you to check out one of my novels—why not try Restoration Murder: The Salamander Horde? It’s a cozy mystery set in the world of restoration. Now, it doesn’t feature a sculpture per se, but the entire story revolves around a very significant piece of art—one that I think you’ll all know and love: Barbaric Splendour by Grayson Perry.

The story follows a character called Ben Robertson, who’s really at a crossroads in his life. At a particularly low point, he stumbles upon a beautiful but battered pocket watch. Intrigued, he enlists the help of a skilled restorer, Rebecca Ruskin, who has an exceptional eye for detail.

But during the restoration process, the timepiece begins to reveal a very dark past. It’s connected to more than one murder, and it’s the unravelling of that hidden history—and the pursuit of truth—that draws Ben and Rebecca into a deeper mystery.

These are cold cases. But are the crimes too cold to solve? Could the fate of the former owners somehow become their own? Or could restoration mean redemption—for more than just the watch? Come on—pick up a copy and support the podcast! I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. And if you don’t want to read it yourself, well… you could always give it to your Aunt Mildred. That would work too—and I’d never know!

Take care, have a good couple of weeks, and I’ll be back soon.

Please Support The Show