Aaron McPeake

Aaron is a sculptor works with a variety of media and materials including film, as there are many narratives he considers worthy of attention. Much of Aaron’s work involves casting bell-bronze, creating sculptures that can be interacted with, touched and ‘rung’. These ‘gong’ works fall into three tropes:
•    objects from personal history
•    bells, gongs and singing bowls
•    geology, including topographical volcanic landscapes (of Iceland) as paintings.

Aaron is currently engaged in various configurations of sound sculptures, stone sculptures, films, installations, photographs/prints and paintings (in collaboration with Stephen Farthing RA). Although he is registered blind, the emphasis in touch and sound in his work is not intended to act as a replacement or to compensate for the visual sense. It is more about enhancing the experience of those who encounter it, his work provides novel opportunities for haptic exploration.  He is also passionate about ‘active listening’, a practice that is generally only undertaken by musicians and mechanical engineers. For most of us, sound is something we are filtering out of our daily lives rather than exploring.

Most recently, he has been working with:
•    Taking casts of Icelandic lava rocks, casting them in bronze, and then melting the original lava rocks from which he casts bowls or ‘caldera’, the name of the source of the lava.
•    Making pairs of identical bells which ring with a different tone.
•    slate as quarried rock to carve into
•    slate dust, combined with resin, as a casting material.
•    roofing slate as a flat surface to etch into
He is the first in his family lineage not to learn to write and draw on slate and this work examines the process of writing as well as the properties of this beautiful and ubiquitous material.

His film and photography work has either relied on ambient sound or ambiguous imagery to encourage the making of multifarious interpretations. Click on this link to watch his documentary travelogue A Sense of the World 

Iceland Landscapes

Duration: n/a

Description: An exhibition of circa 20 topographical paintings of volcanic landscapes.

Singing bowl chamber orchestra

Duration: n/a

Description: An exhibition with performances of 30 bell-bronze gong sculptures of cast objects from the artist's personal history.

Writing in slate

Duration: n/a

Description: These sculptures explore the nature of writing and use the material that was once ubiquitous but is now almost completely redundant - slate.

Recent Artist Talks include: Spike Island, Shape Gallery, Royal Academy, El Arreciado, Toledo, Spain, Chelsea College of Arts, Harrogate College of Art, Royal Holloway and Pangaea Sculptors Centre. Future talks will include Tate Modern. These talks are audience specific and range from children, undergraduate, postgraduate and adult education students and the gallery attending public.

Recent Workshops include: Sand Casting at Spike Island, Bronze Casting at London Sculpture Workshop, Engraving Metals at Camden Arts Centre, Modeling Clay at Spike Island, Working with Stone and Wool and Sheep Bells at El Arreciado, Toledo Spain. These workshops are audience specific and range from children, undergraduate, postgraduate and adult education students and the gallery attending public.