“Querying the essence of what it is to be
‘human’ in the new digital and AI age, his traditional, pictorial use of
charcoal is an attuned and sensitive counterbalance within the contemporary art
scene.”
Born in Zambia in
1969, to a “very Irish mother and very English father”, Pete Codling lived in
Cornwall, Scotland, and London before settling in Portsmouth, his dockyard hometown,
a cultural melting pot, adding to the mixed heritage of his daughter, extended family,
and friends.
His regular travels
to Europe, the Mediterranean and North Africa have given inspiration to his
work and love of art, history, and culture. His broad portfolio work reflects
the art, politics, and economy of the last four decades of the UK/British art
scene. His art is now maturing into a coherent powerful body of work.
At sixteen he went
straight to Portsmouth College of Art & Design (1986 -1991) and then to
East London Polytechnic to complete his BA Hons in Fine Art in Drawing &
Sculpture. From there to Wimbledon School of Art to study Site Specific
Sculpture (1992 -93) and transferring back to Portsmouth to complete his master’s
degree in 1994. He is a regular visiting lecturer to art schools and creative
mentor to fellow artists.
He has had an
established career as a sculptor and designer of public artworks, receiving
commissions from Local Government funded regeneration projects throughout the
UK. Using a variety of materials and scale, from the epic to the miniature, he
has created award winning community projects commissioned to give local
populations a sense of place, engagement, empowerment, and ownership.
A lifelong drawer,
he relied upon drawing as a method of practical investigation and proposal for
sculpture, using drawing as a tool of fabrication and understanding rather than
a pictorial medium. But he has spent the last decade producing a large body of
work on paper focused on narrative figurative drawing, inspired by artist
residencies and his personal journey, in vocation as artist and storyteller.
His work references the personal and poetic as well as political, environmental,
and global issues.
