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Media - Sculpture, Oil Painting, Drawing and Public Art
Email - [email protected]
Website - www.stevenhall.com.au
Steven Hall is a well-established artsworker whose career has spanned some
thirty years. He has a great love & knowledge of timber, and is much admired for his
artisan skills as well as his design talent. The tactile qualities and integrity of timber
– both new & reclaimed - make it his favoured material but he also uses other
elements such as metal, glass, stone, ceramics, lighting and music. The 2D works can be
seen as extensions of his sculptural work where the image is freed from the physical
constraints.
Being an artsworker in Australia has meant that he has developed a diverse
practice.His earlier commissions range through one-off Furniture, Freelance Furniture Design,
Retail Interiors and Retail Signage. Lately the focus has been on site-specific Public
Seating, Sculpture, Works On Paper and Oils on Canvas. Recent commissions include
“Turnout” for the Surfers Paradise Fire Station “Floating” for Nerang
Library/ various pieces of Street Furniture for Brisbane, Toowoomba, Burleigh Heads, Currumbin
foreshore Public Furniture for Aged Care Facilities throughout Queensland/various artworks for
the Blue C Resort.
Steven lives and works with his wife in the Tallebudgera Valley on an ex banana
plantation, where they have established almost 900 cabinet timber trees as a legacy and
replacement of the timber he will have used in his lifetime. It is a rural and tranquil area
surrounded by natural, and planted forests & gardens that inform much of his work. From
the drought came “Copse 03”; the “Corrupt Flower” series evolved from
Heliconias, Bat Flowers, Bromeliads and Orchids in the garden; the sensuous curves of the
Quandong trees can be seen in “Quandong 1,2,3” - even the grass in “Lance
with Shadow” comes from molasses grass (a common weed in the area). His environment is
obviously a strong part of his work.
He continues to explore the relationship between applied art, art and the
useable object. He says:
“The benefit from this work is my own internal cross-fertilizing of
the images from drawing, to sculpture to public artworks. I think this has refreshed and
loosened my approach to street furniture and it has been interesting to see images translated
as can be seen in “Soft” which started from drawings of trees like “Quandong
1,2,3” and then translated into benches “Toowoomba Bench” and “Soft
Bench”. Each work has the same tree starting point - the sensual line of a Spotted Gum
sapling in a forest as it weaves its way to the light, combined with the external humanistic
folding of the Quandong and Ox Heart and the way a tree envelops & adapts to humanity's
hardware (i.e. the way trees grow around old fence posts or fencing wire). Each side of my
practice naturally inspires the other areas.”
Steven Hall is an Accredited member of Artworkers Alliance and a member
of Sculptors Queensland
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