Art - Sculptor Rachel Spring

As I phone-talk to Rachel Spring, a sculptor who has a stunningly original exhibition on at the Hesketh Studio for the next couple of weeks, I can hear seagulls in the background. “They’re rebel seagulls,” she says, from Hastings. This is kind of relevant because Spring is fascinated by the difference between humans and other animals. “Physically we have hardly evolved at all in the last 30,000 years,” she continues. “The big changes have taken place in our brains. Other animals’ DNA structure changes much more quickly.” The most striking piece in the collection is of a human head, with a vein bulging below the skin. It looks primitive, other era-ish. Spring created it very much with the idea of humanity’s brain-evolution in mind. “In a way as individuals we are a microcosm of this process,” she continues. “Each individual’s psychological shape evolves through their relationship with the world.”

Spring employs primitive methods: she uses a raku kiln outside, glazing her work with home-made glazes she concocts out of various minerals and finally burning it in grasses. She also does wonderful stylised horses, which have a medieval misshapenness about them. “I adore fat dripping glazes, which most people consider rather unusual,” she says. She is aware that there is an out-of-its-timeness to her work. “I’ve started at the beginning,” she says. “Hopefully I’m travelling at great speed, in a few years I’ll be in the present, and then I’ll overtake and get into the future.” Now that’s evolution. AL