Lawrence Dicks | Until Now
27th September - 26th October 2025
Lawrence Dicks | Until Now
Exhibition dates: 27th September - 26th October 2025
Preview and drinks reception: Saturday 27th September, 3pm-6pm
Lawrence Dicks (b. 1969) is a British sculptor, based in West Sussex, working in wood, stone, and bronze. He graduated from Exeter College of Art and Design in 1998. Dicks knew from early on in his artistic practice that sculpture would be his medium, enjoying the physicality that working with sculpture demands.
Lawrence's sculpture is heavily influenced by nature and by his specific environment in West Sussex. He writes:
"Over the past few years, my inspiration has been deeply rooted in the environment that surrounds me. From my home and studio, a short walk across a field and along a flint and chalk track brings me to Climping Beach - a place that has become central to my practice.
Since moving here six years ago, I’ve witnessed the shoreline undergo dramatic changes. The effects of rising sea levels and relentless natural forces have claimed vast sections of land. What remains is a landscape that feels almost post-apocalyptic: eroded groynes, collapsed sea defences, jagged fissures where land meets sea, and the remnants of wood, chalk, and flint scattered like bones.
This landscape, with its quiet desolation and raw, strange beauty, has seeped into my work in subtle, instinctive ways. It informs the quiet visual language I’ve developed - one that is expressed in this new body of work.
An element of repetition has emerged in the new wooden sculptures I’ve made over the past year, echoing the rhythmic patterns found in the natural world - the tides, the erosion, the weathering of surfaces over time. These recurring forms speak to both continuity and loss.
Stone, wood, and bronze are my materials - elements shaped by time, echoing the shifting edge of this coast."
Lawrence Dicks | Selected Works
The full collection of available works will be released online when the exhibition opens.
Contact vanessa@irvinggallery.com for an early preview and for all enquiries.
‘Undulate’, 2025. Charred West Sussex Ash | 50 x 60 cm approx.
‘Birdham Oak’, 2025. Charred English Oak | 37 x 46 × 31cm approx.
‘This Path’, 2025. Charred English oak | 31 x 28 cm approx.
About the Artist
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Lawrence Dicks (b. 1969) graduated in 1998 from Plymouth University Exeter (Exeter School of Art and Design). Dicks knew from early on in his artistic practice that sculpture would be his medium, enjoying the physicality that working with sculpture demands. At university he was inspired by some of the great sculptors of the twentieth century: Hepworth, Moore, Brancusi. The work of Peter Randall-Page, David Nash and Richard Long were also inspirational to him as he began his own practice, with David Nash’s lifetime exploration of one natural material, trees and wood, especially continuing to inspire Dicks’ work.
Heavily influenced by nature, Lawrence takes natural phenomena in general, and cellular structure in particular, amongst his sources of inspiration. Living on the Sussex coast, daily walks to the beach and close observation of the sea and the coastline subconsciously filter through to his work, though it is not about that. There is fluid repetition in Lawrence's sculptures, setting off a rhythm which flows between all works and connects them as a whole. The rhythm of the tide is there together with the eroding effect that sea and time have on rocks, smoothing, hollowing, and pitting their surfaces.
There is rhythm and repetition, too, in the actual making when a weighty hammer repeatedly hits a chisel and very slowly reveals a form with surfaces of concave or convex undulations and textures; a recognisable visual language that Lawrence has established.
Lawrence’s overarching interest is what it is to be human, what it feels like to be alive - indeed why we are alive. His intention with his work is to make the viewer stop, take a closer look, engage on a deeper level. Lawrence believes that sculpture is able to communicate some ideas better than words, and he utilises his forms to create a moment to pause, contemplate, and reflect, embracing the subjectivity in the responses that different viewers will have to his sculpture.
Lawrence has exhibited widely throughout the UK, has worked on several commissions, and he has work in private and public collections in the UK - notably Churchill College Cambridge and Marchmont House in Scotland - and internationally.