BIOGRAPHY
Born 1956, Hitchin, Hertfordshire, England
Education:
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY 1998
Three Dimensional Reproductions Department
The Art Students League, New York, NY 1998-1999
Weymouth College, Weymouth, England 1976-1978
Arts University College, Bournmouth, England 1974-1976
Resident:
Hoxton, London, England 1979 to 1988
New York City, USA 1988 to present
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
Alan Brazier, April 2009I returned to London in November 1979 after four years studying in Dorset, England. I found myself working from a studio in a grimy building at Hoxton Square in East London. The area had a Dickensian flavor with alleyways and narrow cobbled streets that seemed unchanged for countless decades. The area was once a sweat-shop district with Victorian warehouses and housing for immigrant workers. This atmosphere had a powerful effect on me and it gave me an affinity with my greatest artistic inspiration, the early twentieth-century sculptor Gaudier-Brzeska. Gaudier-Brezska found himself in similar oppressive circumstances in the then dark side of London’s King’s Cross, where he sculpted under the railway arches. This set the scene for me to explore and adopt a sensibility and imagery rooted in early twentieth-century English art. I found myself working and developing this train of thought for ten years at which point I moved to the USA in 1989.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
1995 Local Colors, The Benny Smith Gallery, Cold Spring, NY, USA (Curator: Caroline McNamara)
1994 Recent works: Alan Brazier and Tonia Hsu, Hoboken Gallery, Hoboken, NJ, USA
1991 Humanism in Contemporary Art, Giustino Gallery, Bronxville, NY, USA
1990 Alan Brazier: Recent works, Giustino Gallery, Bronxville, NY, USA
1988 Pride Gallery. Kensington, London, England. (Curators: Peter Langham, O’Keefe, Judy Mottron)
1987 East London Arts, Rivington Street, London, England
1986 Image of Man, Royal National College for the Blind, Hereford, England
Edinburgh Arts Festival, Scotland (Curator: Richard Demarco)
Flint Gallery, Walsall, England (Curator: Lindsey Brokes)
1985 Glynn Vivian Gallery. Swansea, Wales (Curator: Jennifer Harlam)
Fine Arts Associates, London, England (Curator: Dennis Ewen)
Humanism in Contemporary British Sculpture, Royal Festival Hall, London (Curator: Raymond Lokker)
Redfern Gallery, Cork Street, London, England
Shoreditch Library, London, England
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Humanism Serves the Cause of Children, ArtSpeak, New York, April 1991
Advanni Collects, Sunday Times, London, February 1989
Sculptors Show Human Interest, The World of Interiors, May 1985
Set to Make his Mark on the Artworld, Hackney Gazette, London, March 1985
Marbleous Display, Shoreditch Views, London, March 1985
Distortions that Set out to Scandalize, London Times, London, April 1985
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Royal National College for the Blind, Hereford, England
Shoreditch Library, London, England
South Dorset Technical College, Dorset, England