Richard Forster

Forster’s current practice involves sculpture and small-scale drawing. The latter is often based on an archive of photographic images that he’s collected over time or taken himself, but one which is constantly evolving and organised into genres of interiors, landscape, buildings or figures.

The sculptures are responses to architectural settings, something Forster began to explore early on in his career. His interests lie around the haptic qualities of place; a form of psycho-geography where he begins by listing physical elements of a space before analysing their formal properties. Social narratives entered the work later after a series of exhibitions in temporary galleries in a council flat in Stockwell, London, a working mens’ club in Hackney, London and warehouse in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

The relationship between drawing and sculpture persists and continues to provide a tension between the 2D and 3D elements of Forster’s practice. However high-rise social housing blocks have become a recurring theme in both, culminating in a design and model for his own social housing scheme placed on three found studio tables.

Forster’s work sits at the crux of site-related practice and a hermetic studio-based one. He likes to respond to and interpret specific sites, but is also interested in the processes of fabricating objects appropriated with the readymade or found object.

Richard Forster was born in 1970. He graduated from Manchester Polytechnic with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art in 1992 and from the University of East London in 1995 with a MA in Visual Theories. This year he has exhibited in solo shows at Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, MOT International, London, and the Jerwood Artist’s Platform at Cell Project Space, London. Group exhibitions include ‘The End Begins’ at the Hospital, London (2007); ‘Gail Wigley Window Box’ at New Art Gallery Walsall (2006) and ‘Blue Star, Red Wedge’ at MIMA (2006); Forster lives in Saltburn, Cleveland and works from his studio in Stockton-on-Tees.