Avant Gardeners: C&C at the Stables, Houghton Hall, Norfolk

Christopher Marvell works mostly in bronze to make his figurative sculpture. He takes his subjects from life, the natural world and mythology. He is based near Cambridge and St Ives, Cornwall.

He studied at University of Newcastle upon Tyne, from 1982 to 1986. Initially his ideas are worked out through drawing, planned and plotted further in a 3D maquette, then finalised in plaster and cast in bronze. His sculpture follows the modernist tradition in allowing the material to bring enrichment to the slightest of human or animal forms. Subjects taken from the natural world or from mythology become eternal in their pared-down presence. An owl or a boy standing holding a bird are free of period detail. If time's arrow had been inverted in an uncanny reversal, his subjects would still be recognised and appreciated by Europe’s early inhabitants just as much as by us today. 

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