Artist
Luke Hamel Cooke
English sculptor working in West London, creating silent forms in clay and bronze that invite stillness and contemplation.
Hamel Cooke's work is silent and still. It is surprising such things can be made today. Things made of clay and bronze that stand immobile; do not threaten, inform or serve.
It's surprising because the night sky is no longer silent. It rumbles with Heathrow's next arrival and information on white screens is shown through the night before empty roundabouts. Looking at Hamel Cooke's work is to turn away from information and entertainment, and to reassociate oneself with silence.
To look and know it is ceramic (was clay/earth) and was shaped by thumbs and fingers. To see a coherence of familiar forms. To see a thing that is beyond us—as the night sky once was.
The work is concerned with slow, imperceptible processes of the natural world, and yet it is not clear what these processes result in. The processes of gestation and germination inexorably lead somewhere and yet the work does not deal with the results of these processes but finds a form within which they inhabit.
Practice
Luke Hamel Cooke (b. 1997) is an English sculptor who works in West London. The evolution of his current practice began in January 2021, when working for his degree show at Falmouth University. There, he made small, clay monopods and within a month he had made enough for an installation. The installation resembled a sea of bristling life straining up towards some source of energy.
Location
West London, UK
Materials
Clay, ceramic, bronze
Approach
Hand-built forms shaped by slow, imperceptible processes. Each piece invites stillness and resists functionality—existing simply to be observed.
Education
Falmouth University (Degree Show, 2021)
"To look and know it is ceramic—was clay, was earth—and was shaped by thumbs and fingers."
Studio Visits
For enquiries about works, commissions, or studio visits, please get in touch.
Contact