Human Forms represents an important foundation within the development of my sculptural practice. The series began with an ongoing fascination with the human figure as a means of exploring movement, presence, balance, and emotion through metal.
Working from the figure allowed me to investigate how far the body could be reduced, elongated, or abstracted while still retaining a sense of human presence. Across the series, I became increasingly interested in the space between recognition and abstraction —allowing posture, silhouette, proportion, and movement to communicate without relying on literal representation.
The physical process of making became equally important. Working directly with steel through shaping, forming, stretching, shrinking, panel beating, and welding, I began to discover how the material could move between rigidity and fluidity. The marks and distortions created through making were not hidden, but became part of the character of each figure.
As the series developed, the human body became less a subject to be represented and more a language through which ideas could be expressed:
This exploration gradually led towards a more distilled understanding of the figure. In Of Iron and Steel, the human form became increasingly simplified, and the material itselt began to carry more of the emotional meaning. The figure was no longer simply something to depict, but a vehicle through which ideas of endurance, connection, fragility, and human experience could be explored.
Human Forms therefore marks the beginning of a continuing investigation: how the physical language of steel can be used to express something fundamentally human.
The questions first explored through individual figures would later expand beyond the individual
—towards the vulnerability of humanity in Of Iron and Steel, the imagined remnants of civilisation in Re-Rehearsing the Fracture, and the consequences of human conflict in Why Not Peace?
Nick Rodgers