Metal in Motion

Derwent London with Hugo Dalton

Hugo Dalton takes film of dancers and then scribes these movements into the simplest of arcs. These lines are solidified into a bar of stainless steel that is mirror polished. Sounds simple. The elegance and beauty is interpreted into a sculpture with a lot of engineering calculations and fine workmanship in bending the complex curves by hand in the workshop. The sculpture has to appear very light, the bar is 50 x50mm it has to stand alone, not resonate but simply flex. The polishing to make a mirror surface is a long and highly skilled process, getting to reflect is easy, getting to a mirror quality is a very specialist craft.