Andrew Dunnill – Bloom and Bellow

Canwood Gallery is extremely honoured to have been chosen to host Bloom and Bellow, by the immensely talanted Andrew Dunnill.

About Andy

Born and raised in Gloucestershire, Andrew’s love of drawing led him to pursue a career in art, earning an honours degree at the West Surrey College of Art. He chose the United States as his home after graduating, living and working in Greensboro, NC.   He taught at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he rose to Full Professor of Fine Art in 2013.  Sadly Andrew died at the early age of 49 in February 2016.

After graduating from the University of Maryland with an MFA in 1991, Dunnill moved to New York where he was artist in residence at Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City. This was an influential period where he worked closely with Mark di Suvero and many other international sculptors, and laid the foundation for an ongoing commitment to monumental public sculpture. Dunnill exhibited extensively throughout the United States and abroad.  He exhibited large scale sculptures at Socrates Sculpture Park, NY, Navy Pier,  Chicago, IL, at Roosevelt Island NY, Franconia Sculpture Park, Shafer, MN,  Saint Paul’s Western Sculpture park, MN, Convergence Sculpture Exhibition Rhode Island, Plattsburg State Art Museum, Plattsburg, NY, and The Athena Foundation, NY.

In 2001 he was commissioned by the Indian Government to build a permanently sited sculpture outside the Gujarat Maritime Board at the Alang ship breaking yards in Gujarat where he was an artist in residence for two months. Dunnill’s exhibitions include numerous gallery shows where he exhibits monumental to small scale sculptures and drawings. In 2005 he had a solo exhibition at the Art Gallery at the University of Maryland.  He had solo shows at the Usdan Gallery Bennington College, VT and the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Arts in Winston-Salem. He also exhibited in a number of group exhibitions including, but not limited to, the Sculpture Centre, NY, Salena Gallery, Long Island City, NY, Middendorf Gallery, Washington D.C. and John Davis Gallery, New York, NY.

Working predominantly in steel and cast metals, Dunnill drew imagery from many disparate sources. Whether clambering through the vast cavernous hulls of deconstructed oil tankers; navigating the East River on a reconstructed tugboat; studying complex relationships of figures in the landscape or simply unleashing the potential of materials that he selected in scrapyards or found on his travels, Dunnill strove to build three-dimensional poetry.

The steel sculptures ‘ Bloom’ and ‘Bellow’ have been brought to the UK by Andrew’s family and displayed at Canwood Gallery and Sculpture Park, within sight of Mayhill on the Herefordshire / Gloucestershire border. Mayhill was Andrew’s favourite playground during his formative years, and is where he now lies.

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