Cadence

Mention carbon fibre and most people think of racing yachts and supercars; Ray Haydon saw something else in it. After decades working in bronze, wood, stainless steel, aluminium and corten, Cadence was the show where carbon fibre opened up a new imagery for his sculpture: wall-mounted ribbons sheathed in wood veneer, frozen mid-motion.

“Imagine a ribbon thrown in the air, the way it loops and curves — that’s the effect I’m trying to achieve,” Ray says of the forms made for Cadence: wall-mounted sculptures built on a carbon fibre core sheathed in wood veneer, moments of frozen motion caught in incredibly light, flexible forms. They float on the wall on slim steel fixings, throwing bold shadows in the passing light of day. Most were from the new Open Helix series, shown alongside Spirit III, a stainless steel sculpture on a basalt base.

Each work takes up to seven and a half metres of carbon fibre, looped and furled into a finished piece sometimes more than two metres wide. “The beauty of this material is that it holds its form,” he says. “Any other material would be too heavy.”

It was a departure, but not from nowhere. Ray, then working from a Parnell workshop, came to sculpture after a varied working life in jewellery, silversmithing, furniture making and hand-crafting stainless steel fittings for superyachts — every one of those trades taught him a material from the inside. The arts writer Warwick Brown has called him a restless inventor who honours the old traditions of fine finish and attention to the smallest details, describing the works as “astounding in their originality, elegant complexity and the perfection of their making.”