"Νίκη victory V silver" Sculpture

‘Which do you like more London or Athens?’ this is a phrase that most Greeks people used to ask me upon meeting. Partly out of a sense of disbelief that a person from ‘civilized’ place such as the UK could possibly choose to settle as seemingly chaotic as Greece and partly because the answer sought was already known, that an undeniable force of nature exists here in the place and the people.

My work is invested in a spiritual connection to the world and this planet home yet I recognise the need to break-up the perpetuity. I Come originally from the ‘Black country’ in the UK, self-designated birthplace of industry and artifice. My interests concern commonalities of both places, where I was born and grew up, and where I live for approximately half of my life in Athens.

Exploring the nuances of the world using the body as a tool. A variety of working methods constitute my approach with a predilection for tactile response. The interpretations and distortions occurring during this process give rise to idiosyncrasies that betray human nature, which are key to a question of how we are able to visualise and how our physicality inhabits our mind's view.

In Athens I look at an evolution of object-making and apply it to a repeated challenge by apparent limitations of our techno driven two dimensional World towards an increasingly obscure and demanding space. Relief sculpture offers a fundamental truth for me. There is an introspective intimacy, applicable to the moment, which is beginning to be felt by its absence in a world of self-promotion.

Hand crafted creation, increasingly disenfranchised in a digital, binary realm, stands as remarkable tactile document to human relationship with the planet we inhabit. In fractal mentality I do this by harnessing local information into ‘soundbites’ of social comment which then are represented as sculptural quasi–virtual reality. These forms are completed as serendipitous geometric meanderings in accordance with the gathered narrative and the results show a hybrid mathematical figurative form of sculpture.



Toby Short is an independent arts professional. He studied at Camberwell School of Art in London becoming a professional sculptor for films, theatre and television working on ‘James bond ‘Goldeneye’ and ‘The Mummy’.