Winchester, Lawrence Edwards

Winchester – Borrowed Breath, exhibition by Laurence Edwards

Event Details

  • Location: Winchester Cathedral
  • Address: The Close, Winchester, Hampshire, SO23 9LS
  • Start date: 06th September 2024
  • End date: 05th November 2024
  • Times: 9.00 am
  • Entry fee: Included in admission to Cathedral

This Autumn, sixteen sculptures by Laurence Edwards from his leaf series will be on view, including new pieces which have been created especially in response of Winchester Cathedral.

The exhibition in the north transept at Winchester Cathedral presents a series of ethereal, cut-through, transmorphic figures by Laurence Edwards particularly inspired by the history of the Great West Window.

Leaves and quincunx (the geometric pattern of four-sided shapes with a solitary figure in their centre) figure in the experimental work within the show. Pointing towards a relationship with the building and the artefacts of Winchester Cathedral, these works originating in the wax state of the bronze casting process, a territory Edwards has made uniquely his own, speak to the sense of light as matter entering and exiting the physical presence of the figure as a volume. They evoke the sense of windows and also of ephemerality, a sort of visual translucency of the present, the past and forthcoming.

“I was blown away by the great West window of Winchester Cathedral which itself had been blown away by Oliver Cromwell, only for the fragments of glass to be collected and reassembled by the people of the town, the resulting assemblage of fragments and light seemed a great metaphor for the exhibition I’m about to have in the Cathedral. With my bronze figures dissolving and coalescing in cycles through this spectacular building, I try to trace attempts that have been made at making sense of our place in the world through the lens of this magnificent space.” – LAURENCE EDWARDS