In Critical Mass, Paul Cocksedge returns to some of the most industrial, heavy, and raw materials available: plate steel and marble. He explores what happens when they are pushed into forms that speak of tension, intimacy, and the human hand.
The Critical Mass table begins with a CorTen plate, fifteen millimetres thick, industrially manufactured, weighing hundreds of kilos. Cocksedge cuts into it, strip by strip. These slivers are then welded back to the edge of the original sheet to lift it to table height. The process feels like collage. Instead of cutting paper, Cocksedge works with steel. Instead of glue, he welds. The result is a horizontal plane that feels suspended. The legs are leaning, sliding, falling away. There is a visual contradiction: the form feels abstract, but it is functional.
The Critical Mass series holds an energy, something on the edge of collapse or explosion. While working on this series, Cocksedge found himself reflecting on the speed and change of two of the most pressing issues of our time: AI and climate change. Every conversation, most thoughts, led back to this in some way. In contrast to these contemporary issues, being in the factory around a team of makers, welding, cutting, calculating, felt refreshing. The directness and physicality of being around the metal, the mass, the heat felt real. Immediate. Human. Present. There is somethingin that experience, between the digital and the physical, that runs through the entire exhibition.
The second body of work sits at the other end of the emotional spectrum. Cocksedge takes blocks of marble, quarried and cut, and brings them together in ways that feel soft. There is no welding here, just weight and gravity. The forms nestle, lean, and gently compress one another; the material is hard, ancient, cold, but the shapes are warm, intimate, even affectionate. Together, these two series sit in dialogue. One is sharp, angular, abstracted. The other is rounded, gentle, compressed. Yet both emerge from the same place, this pressure point, this moment where technology, environment, and people are all converging, and what happens when all of it reaches apoint where something must give, or rise.
Paul Cocksedge (b. 1978) lives and works in Hackney, East London.The artist is known for his unorthodox approach to materials in works that span public art, sculpture and architectural installation. Science is an ever-present anchor for the works, and a forensic investigation into the limitations of processes, materials, and the human body lays the foundations for everything. Paul is enduringly curious about our relationship to the Earth, and his works address pressing issues of our time, from social connection to fossil fuel. Sorcery in light, colour and mass all zero in on creating a moment of communication with other human beings. Paul grew up in north London, and came to art on his own terms, bringing a freshness in perspective that has remained integral to his work. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Industrial Design from Sheffield Hallam University in 1997, and subsequently studied under the mentorship of Ron Arad at the Royal College of Art in London. Graduating with an MA in Product Design in 2002, he went on to co-found his eponymous studio with business partner, fellow RCA graduate Joana Pinho in 2004.
