In the 1980s my friend Nicholas Pope was a young lion of British art, a pioneer of the use of natural materials. He was, with Tim Head, the British representative at the 1980 Venice Biennale, and a participant in the Arts Council exhibitions The Condition of Sculpture (1975) and Nature As Material (1980).
Nick, who has died aged 77, would test his materials to the edge of destruction, taking, for example, pieces of Bath stone up to their shatterpoint in Mr and Mrs Arnolfini (1978). If he had added one more gram of weight or degree of slope to his 1.8 metre high Leaning Chalk (1975), the work would have collapsed. As the Tate catalogue entry for Stacked Lead (1976) puts it: “The works in this series are only correctly exhibited if they appear to be about to fall over.”
This heroic pin-dancing all changed when Nick contracted an encephalitic virus in Tanzania in 1982 while studying wood-carving techniques on a British Council fellowship.
He had married the artist Janet Bonehill in 1976; their daughter Mary was born in 1981. When the brain-burrowing virus struck Nick down, “I had two toddlers to look after,” Janet said.
His treatment in the brain injury clinic at Hereford county hospital led by Dr Dave Quinn rebuilt Nick’s health and confidence. Energetic free-scribbling, sometimes two-handed and accompanied by Elvis and Buddy Holly played at maximum volume, began to shift the course of his art into new, non-natural materials such as epoxy resin, ceramics, oilbar, knitting and coloured glass.
His colours began to soar into dazzling primaries, and his forms in drawing and sculpture became soft, pulpy and unpredictable. Knitting on large needles, with no plan or pattern, led him towards works including his Mr and Mrs Pope series, complex hanging sculptures evoking the married intimacy of intermingled internal organs. Nick washed this knitting at the highest heat on the most brutal cycle available on his washing machine, and sent the resulting lump to Beijing. There artisanal sculptors expressed what they found in marble and returned it for display at Nick’s 2013 exhibition at Roche Court, Salisbury.
His masterpiece of these years was Apostles Speaking in Tongues Lit By Their Own Lamps (1993-96), tall plant-like terracotta figures each bearing an oil lamp evoking the speaking in tongues in the gospels. They were first shown together in the New Art room at Tate Britain (1996) and in 2014 around the apse of Salisbury Cathedral.
Nick was born in Sydney, Australia, the third of five sons of Ernle Pope, an officer (later vice-admiral) in the Royal Navy, and his wife Pamela (nee Davies). He went to Charterhouse, in Godalming, Surrey, followed by Farnham and Corsham Schools of Art (the latter 1970-73). He and I met in 1974 when he took part in the City Art Project at Portsmouth and Southsea, where I was curator of art at Portsmouth City Museums. Nick’s contribution was a technically self-supporting arch made out of 30 oak blocks, since destroyed.
Outside his art Nick worked as a Samaritan counsellor, and with Janet created an orchard at their home in Much Marcle, Herefordshire, where in the 2010s they made and marketed Pope’s Perry.
Janet died in 2020. Nick is survived by Mary and two grandchildren.
