LONDON.- John Martin Gallery announced the upcoming exhibition of new work by Cornwall based sculptor William Peers. Previewed at this year’s Art London in October, 100 Days will be exhibited in its entirety at John Martin Gallery in February 2010. The idea for 100 Days: Sketches in Marble is to make one sculpture every day for one hundred days, using the same material, Portuguese marble.

One of the motives of the series is the prospect of exploring 100 ideas in a short period of time. By setting a boundary – restricting the time allowed for each piece, and therefore, the size of the work – there is a strange liberation. The constants of time and material also lend the series a unity: the sculptures are linked by their common constraints.

The other motive of the series is to explore the area between figuration and abstraction. It is for this reason that I have decided to start the series with a carving of a figure. I began as a figurative artist twenty years ago, but then had a sudden and complete move towards abstraction, without as it were a backward glance. I am left with a sense of a gulf between the two disciplines. This series of sculptures is an attempt to investigate unfinished business.

William Peers was born in 1965 and studied at Falmouth Art College after which he was apprenticed to a stone-carver from 1989 to 1991. He lives and works in North Cornwall. Born in 1965, William Peers apprenticed himself to a stone-carver shortly after leaving Falmouth Art College. It was during this time that he was urged to work slowly, entirely by hand rather than with machine tools.. At first his work was largely figurative and he pursued a path similar to earlier direct carvers, chief amongst them Eric Gill, but gradually his work became more and more abstract.

This new series of work charts a journey, each sculpture has been created in the same length of time, in the same material, and each reflects on the preceding sculpture. The sculptures are exhibited chronologically, so that a walk along the sculpture is a progression through form and time.