For the first time in 20 years, Peter Blake has turned his eclectic gaze to sculpture, presenting new work alongside pieces from his six-decade career in a new exhibition at Waddington Custot, ‘Peter Blake: Sculpture and Other Matters.’
‘I think it will be interesting to see everything all together over the long span of my career, and see how things juxtapose,’ Blake tells us. ‘It doesn't necessarily go from the beginning to the end and get better, [but it does] change direction, and become something similar, with some kind of development. And what was interesting is that Jacob [Twyford, senior director at Waddington Custot] picked up on the conceptual art elements of it, which I've never really talked about or pointed out.’
‘I’m not really a sculptor in the sense that I could sit down with a bunch of clay and make a head’
Peter Blake
Early works, such as Locker (1959), a sculpture of an old RAF locker adorned with pin-up images, join pieces that demonstrate Blake’s early adoption of storybook characters, such as Tarzan Box – ‘Big Iron Bird, She Come’ (c.1965). In the 2012 series Found Sculpture, found objects including pebbles and rocks are imbued with the status of fine art, coming to rest on their oak and marble plinths.
Throughout it all runs Blake’s distinctive playfulness (also evident in his 2021 artist’s recipe for Wallpaper* – beans on toast) and a clear love of materials, teased into sculptural shapes or celebrated in their raw forms. For Blake, classic motifs and everyday objects are treated with the same respect. ‘I try and match the found materials up to what the object is,’ he says. ‘So for instance, in the piece called Family, which is quite big – almost life size – the child is made, as I recall, of childlike things. So it's a box of biscuits, and a ball and things like that. In another piece, the man is made from very masculine things, and the mother is made from very feminine things. The child is made from toys. That's how I do it sometimes.’
A spirit of collaboration unites works from the Still Life series, created as an homage to Claude Monet, with Then & Now, For Damien (2003), referencing Damien Hirst, and later tributes to artist and cartoonist Saul Steinberg.
Ultimately, the retrospective is a celebration of Blake’s juxtaposition of cultural references and materials, for the creation of pieces sparking joy, above all else. ‘They're all pretty much collage sculptures,’ Blake adds. ‘Though I might be able to, I’m not really a sculptor in the sense that I could sit down with a bunch of clay and make a head.’
Peter Blake’s 'Sculpture and Other Matters' is on at Waddington Custot from 20 February – 13 April 2024
