Simon Hitchens
Simon Hitchens graduated from UWE in 1990 and has been practicing since then, he now lives and works in Somerset. His studio practice underpins everything, exploring ideas and making object-based sculpture, drawing, film and other media. This is balanced by making large-scale public commissions which have an acute awareness of the specifics of place whilst retaining the integrity of his own sculptural voice.
Simon sees himself as a sculptor but his practice is multi-disciplinary. Rock is the material backbone to his creative explorations and the conceptual focus of his sculptures. Over the years his physical involvement with rock has become increasingly minimal as he combines this most traditional of sculpting materials with more contemporary and technically challenging ones.
Exploring interconnectedness between the human and the non-human, as a means of understanding our relationship with impermanence (what passes and what outlasts), is a key focus within his practice. The work questions differences between animate and inanimate, more specifically rock and flesh, mountain and body, to gently tease out an understanding of the human condition and our place within the world.
The natural world is an endless source of inspiration to him, and a direct tool he uses to create his work. For example, his current series of drawings require sunlight as the key source for image making; ceaselessly chasing shadows cast by a rock between sunrise and sunset. These drawings are unique in time and space to a given location on the planet, recording the relentless rotation of the earth beneath our feet.