Biography
Bruce Gernand (b. USA 1949) studied Philosophy at the San Francisco State University in 1970 before studying Sculpture at City and Guilds of London Art School (1971-72), the Central School of Art and Design (1972-74) and the Royal College of Art(1975-76). He lives and works in Garboldisham, Norfolk.Gernand has exhibited his work regularly in Britain and abroad since 1982. He was awarded a Henry Moore Foundation Fellowship (1992-94) and participated in the Osaka Sculpture Triennale of 1995. In 1997 and 2001 Gernand visited the European Ceramics Work Centre, Holland, for a three month period having received an Arts and Humanities Research Board award. In 2004, a grant from the Arts Council England provided an opportunity to work at the Beeldenstorm Daglicht foundry and print workshops, also in Holland. In 2007 Gernand was offered the opportunity to return to the European Ceramics Work Centre, as part of its Combined Residency programme, where he collaborated with two architects. Bruce Gernand was head of sculpture at Central Saint Martins from 1997-2007 and is currently a Senior Research Fellow there.
The scale of Bruce Gernand's sculptures relate to the human body as a form that you can measure yourself against or encircle with your arms. There is a preoccupation with juxtapositions within Gernand's work; with surface and inner shape, with organic and technological references, with setting up propositions within the work and dismantling them. Gernand exploits the characteristics of the materials and processes he uses, to the extent that these become the subject(s) of his sculptures. Since 1998 Gernand has been involved with 3D computer modelling and much of his work expresses the relationship of the digital/virtual and its embodiment in sculpture. Paradoxically, the use of digital technology has opened up the work to narrative structure and figuration.
