TELFER STOKES

I have come to make sculptural objects as a natural development from making visual books. The kind of freedom that I had going out with the camera and shooting for a book has been transfered to a visit with a trailer to the scrap yard. My material now is something more physically tangible - the need to transform the base material into something cohesive/whole, remains the same. I do not see my work coming from a sculptural tradition, although what I have made are three dimensional objects. I associate myself with an activity that brings material together: material with a history that has caught my eye because it has the potential to be transformed.


Telfer Stokes
1940 Born St Ives, Cornwall.
1958-62 Attended the Slade, which he represented on the Aldermaston Ban the Bomb marches.
1962-3 Postgraduate Beckmann Fellowship to Brooklyn Museum Art School, New York, surviving the Cuban Missile Crisis and meeting some of the Abstract Expressionists, particularly Barnett Newman, also at this time, among others, Marcel Duchamp.

Exhibited paintings in London through the 60’s culminating in a show at the Serpentine Gallery in 1971 which was work made with pigment, fibre glass & strip lighting.

1964 Started teaching drawing at Reading Art School and later drawing & painting at Bath Academy, Corsham, into the 1970’s.
1971 Founded imprint WEPRODUCTIONS (Artist Books).
1975 Moved from London to Scotland. Founded imprint FLAT IRON PRESS. Published 20 Artist’s Books, some in collaboration with Helen Douglas, between 1972-2002, The books were printed with presses in USA, by himself or by commercial printers.
2002 Moved to Southwold, Suffolk, to bathe in the sea in the mornings and to make sculptural objects.