EDINBURGH.- 'Instalments' is a series of online viewing rooms presented by Ingleby Gallery. To accompany the online project new work by each artist is exhibited on the east wall of the 'Feast Room', on the first floor of the Glasite Meeting House, our gallery on Barony Street, Edinburgh. The sixth artist in this series, whose exhibition began on March 16th, is Joel Tomlin.

On a raised table in Joel Tomlin’s subterranean studio there’s a bowl of small, dried figs, a plate of shortbread, a few almonds. Snacks for the visitor, or an offering to the gods... they could be either. On a work bench in the corner there’s another pile of figs, these ones in bronze, gessoed and painted, a reminder of the artist’s long years working in a foundry, cast from the fruit of a tree at William Blake’s grave down the road at Bunhill Fields. They have a quiet, talismanic energy that sets the tone.

Joel Tomlin’s studio is a place of files and chisels, axes, hand saws and pliers, there are no power tools. Every mark and shaving, every cut and carve is made by hand. Slowly, and with love. Wooden sculptures jostle for space on crowded surfaces, lumps of timber gathered from the streets line the floors, and everywhere there are tiny objects made from discarded off-cuts of wood and tin.

Some of Tomlin’s sculptures have what he describes as ‘conversational attributes’, a sense of one work communicating with another, or relationships building between things. It encourages an anthropomorphic reading, especially when multiple objects are arranged, Morandi-like, on a shelf, instilling inanimate jugs and jars with personality. A wooden plate becomes a kind of platform: one minute a stage for performing fruit; the next a landscape, its surface the horizon. The inhabitants of Tomlin’s studio gather and sift, finding their place over time in groups. Some stand apart, others band together: a pair of vase-like forms seem to question each other like an old married couple.

There’s humour too, ‘an undertone of levity’ as he describes it, but also a gravity born of the honest and careful crafting of his materials. Every scrap of material, and many of his tools, have been found. Nothing bought, and nothing wasted. Each piece of wood has a history, every sculpture a pre- existing starting point which is teased and worried into being over many months. Tiny additions and subtractions change everything – each move informing the next as objects are picked up, put down, filed, shaved, adjusted and assembled ... ‘nibbled away at’, to use his expression. The surface is a surprise, smooth to the touch, lovingly sanded into softness and gently coloured in muffled shades.

Works by Joel Tomlin are currently on display in the 'Feast Room', on the upper level of the gallery, open as usual.