About

Andrew Kinghorn is a British sculptor based in Edinburgh. He was born in Hong Kong 1951 and educated at Dollar Academy and Chelsea College of Art from where he graduated in sculpture in 1974. He emigrated to Australia in 1974. After jobs labouring and working for the NSW Public Works Dept, he taught in the Art Department of Deakin University. During this time he travelled extensively in Australia, Papua New Guinea and much of the Indonesian archipelago, visiting Java, Sumatra, Bali, Suluesi and Borneo. He left teaching in 1980 and spent a year and a half travelling overland from Australia to Europe, spending extended periods in Sumatra, Thailand, Burma, India, Nepal and Turkey. After spending some time in the UK he travelled through Europe before returning to Australia in 1982. Having spent so many of the previous years studying other extraordinary cultures in the world, reevaluating European art and design made him realise just how rich and varied European culture is.

During the mid eighties he worked full time as a sculptor and exhibited at various public galleries including the National Gallery of Victoria.

In 1990 he rekindled his relationship with his childhood sweetheart. He moved to Edinburgh, married in 1991. After arriving in Edinburgh he restored several neglected listed buildings, before returning to sculpture. He has a long standing relationship with the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop.

The work

Much of Andrew’s sculpture is autobiograhical and concerns experiences that have had an strong impact on him especially the process of aging. There are also religious themes. And although much of the work is informed by Christianity there is a strong interest in animist world views. For half a millennium Western civilisation has ridiculed tribal societies as ‘primitive’ and of no real consequence. Yet their understanding of the natural world and desire to live in harmony with it, is perhaps the way forward for us all. Maybe a cultural perspective that the West has dismissed should now be taken seriously.

Andrew’s work uses traditional skills, mostly traditional materials and the work is invariably well crafted. Although ‘concept’ is very important to him, the endpoint that he seeks are powerful, self explanatory images that still have a contemporary relevance.

He works primarily in bronze, aluminium and stainless steel.