introduction

Toby Short is an independent sculptural, design, and arts-project professional born in Wolverhampton and established since 1992 in London. He graduated from Camberwell School of Art with a degree in Fine Art Sculpture BA (Hons) in 1989 and became a professional sculptor for films, theatre and television in the UK.

Toby undertakes sculptural art and design commissions and exhibitions from his practice based in Athens Greece. He has produced large scale commissions in the UK, Greece and the USA. Toby has participated in the National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens ‘Expanded Ecologies during a time of Emergency’ (2009), Athens Biennial 1 parallel projects ReMapKm, ‘Where is the Art?’ (2007), Bozar Palais des beaux- arts Brussels ‘No Country for Young Men: Contemporary Greek Art in Times of Crisis’ as ‘Guerrilla Optimist’ (2014).

He was commissioned to create ‘Otrera’ the Amazon warrior queen, Hotel Zena, Washington DC (2019) and ‘Industrial Syros’ a trio of large installations with interactive kinetic elements for the Peiraki Centre Syros (2015). Other commissions include ‘critical resonance’ a large stainless-steel installation of a ship’s hull for the offices of Liquimar shipping Athens Greece and interactive kinetic light installation ‘earthnet’ at the Magna Science Adventure centre in Rotherham, Sheffield (2001).

about the work

Toby’s main area of interest is in relief sculpture which he sees as a window into the inner self. These reliefs take various forms, from abstract to representational but always containing the elements of depth and perspective to draw the eye in. Influences within his work include the gloomily-lit theatrical scenes of Gustave Doré, improvised tableuax of photographer Boyd Webb, literary sources such as TS Elliot’s Wasteland and Ian McEwan’s Cement Garden and the contemporary Pop reliefs of Ron van der Ende.

The subject matter of his sculptures has varied over time. Currently the pieces he makes show a miscellany of images taken from everyday experience, the media and from his walks in Athens. A haptic aggregate of sculpted and painted surfaces showing everyday stuff and modern calamity juxtaposed as Oxymora of a pseudo-classical aesthetic, the grim and the barren beautified.

In other works digitised nature is manifest as crystalline, multifaceted, ad-hoc structures some of which appear to emerge from the flatness of the wall and in the absence of symmetry, what seems to have evolved from mathematics actually results in a serendipitous spirituality.

Building excavations photographed around Athens are brought to life in ‘holes’ a series of large-scale painted plaster reliefs. They show views which both intrigue and repulse simultaneously by revealing hidden scenes, behind hoardings and sandwiched in the depths between tall buildings. Inaccessible to the public this anonymous auxiliary space remains like an oasis in the city where the complexities of everyday living are stripped away to reveal the raw material of everything; space and nothingness, like empty portals to a different unmade world, denuded of civilization but resonant with an air of expectation.

Toby’s underlying ideas have been enriched by experiences of other creative practises over the years and his approach has become synthesized. From an exploratory point of view, collaborations with other artists involving performance, installation and speech have been indispensible, being rewarding from a socially interactive point of view and also enabling him to re-consider sculpture as something with a dynamic in more than just 3 dimensions.