Liquid gold

William Pye has observed, somewhat wryly, that he’s better known among architects and designers than he is by the art-loving public.

William Pye has observed, somewhat wryly, that he’s better known among architects and designers than he is by the art-loving public. There is a simple reason for this: in recent years he has had very few exhibitions in galleries. His work used to be a regular feature of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, but he is not an RA, and an artist of his stature does not readily court rejection. After a run of showing at the RA for some 30 seasons, he was turned down twice in the hurly-burly of general submission. The panjandrums of Burlington House missed a trick when they passed over Pye.

For, despite the lack of gallery presence, he’s an extremely distinguished public sculptor, his curly tube-and-dish steel sculpture ‘Zemran’ being a familiar landmark on the South Bank, his cones of water ‘Slipstream’ and ‘Jetstream’ improving the ambience of Gatwick airport, and recent commissions including major works in Sweden, Norway, Canada, Greece and Russia. He has even designed a font for Salisbury Cathedral that was installed and consecrated in 2008. Pye’s work has an enviably international presence in both public and private spaces.

‘Zemran’ (1972) was something of a turning point. Up till then Pye had made semi-abstract sculpture from industrial steel tubing, which tended to be either polished or chromed to maximise its reflective properties. After it, he concentrated on less substantial effects, focusing on the illusive and ephemeral through the use of curtains and shafts of tensioned steel cables. As he said in 1979, ‘All my work attempts to combine an architectural experience while retaining the sense of object, of self-containment rather than theatrical space.’