by Ann Elliot

The artist has to move on. Choices are constantly made, guiding principles refined. The artist keeps an open eye, an open mind, and hopes for moments of understanding.

Charles Hadcock has been working as a sculptor for twenty years. As a student at the Royal College of Art he found concepts for sculpture that have continued to nourish his work. He had created sculpture from casts taken from polystyrene packaging, used as a pattern, but which were given a new identity through translation into another material, ordered in a different context. Hadcock's touch was light, but significant. The idea of these 'handmade-ready-mades' was offered by the critic, William Feaver, in his commentary on Hadcock's graduation show in 1989, and is a notion that has recurred throughout the years in his sculpture, but in many different guises.

When making the line drawing Vessel 2006 illustrated opposite, Hadcock experienced a recent and most startling moment of understanding. Based in nature and in engineering, the drawing is about (but not of) an engineering pattern for a water turbine. It is also about forms in nature, and in mathematics or geometry - the nautilus shell, the ammonite, and the spiral - and in music, the horn. His arrival at this point means that the new sculptures in this exhibition mark fresh beginnings that the artist himself is just starting to understand and to develop. For Hadcock this is an exciting and exhilarating time.

As Charles Hadcock arrived at this seminal point in his development as an artist, it is useful to recall themes and sources that have contributed to the growth of concept and technique that nurture his sculpture: iron, alchemy, the natural world, geology, music, mathematics, poetry, architecture, engineering, the ready-made or multiple that he creates as components for a range of related sculptures. The story is charted through models, maquettes, small sculptures, monumental sculptures, drawings, and prints.

The pathway to Hadcock's new work has been long and forward-looking, but with the occasional glance over his shoulder. The early items in this selection are three monumental pieces: Sesqui 2002, Accord and Sextus, both of 2003, all of which are made from a multiplicity of identical elements locked and bolted together. Mathematically formed, referring to the pace, tone and motion in music, and cased in rock-like texture, the pieces curve and flow. Pause, counterpoint and cut are also common to the three. The pause and cut is reminiscent of an even earlier series, of Caesura sculptures made between 1994 and 2002, represented in the exhibition by maquettes for larger versions.

Iron is Charles Hadcock's preferred choice of metal for sculpture. It is matt, absorbent of light in its natural state, and it changes over time. Iron rusts to magnificent browns and reds, it is tough, industrial and basic. 'Iron, an atavistic material, is the medium I like most for my sculpture. It is extracted through one of the oldest processes mankind has used, and refers back to something so inherent in our psyche that I want to celebrate it,' says Hadcock. 'The base metal is just the same as it ever was, although now it has been developed into all forms of steel. Iron was also fundamental in the Industrial Revolution, and informed my interest in engineering and industrial design: bridges, the flywheel and so on.' Because of his abiding interest in engineering and industrial processes, Hadcock prefers to work with industrial rather than fine art foundries, for portions of his sculpture are to be as anonymous as factory made items. The eye and hand of the artist is to be found more in his choice of parts and in locating them within the whole sculptural structure, and in the essentially magical element of intuition.

Closely allied with iron are alchemy, its mysteries, and the mythology surrounding the alchemist. In Hadcock's work the role of the alchemist is a metaphor for that of the artist, and his somewhat secretive purpose of turning base metal into gold.

The engineer in Charles Hadcock works hand in hand with his alchemist persona, to bring fantasy, the ethereal side of his work - its music and poetry, its flights of fancy - into solid form, in sculptures that are so carefully made that they stand surely and safely, yet look light and on occasion impossibly surreal as some appear to bear glancing contact with the ground. Engineering, like architecture is in his blood, his great- grandfather (who designed the naval guns that may be seen outside the Imperial War Museum, London), grandfather, and several uncles were engineers. His father, also and engineer, made precision hi-fi equipment.

Aspects of the natural world and geology lie in combination within Charles Hadcock's work, openly, or as hidden jewels. Finding that forms observed within the natural world are often the source for solving practical design problems, Hadcock, has utilised this both at first- and at second-hand. His direct observation of rock surfaces, for example, has provided sources for the surface of his sculptures, while at second-hand he has appropriated items such as designed or engineered solutions for packaging, and machinery of various types. These, cast in other materials become components for his sculptures. Recently the largely concealed world of fossils has entered his sculptural repertoire.

From music Hadcock draws on pace, meter, crescendo and volume. He listens endlessly to classical music, with the effect that it finds both conscious and subliminal routes into his work. A sculptural composition or drawing may be routed through a known and considered passage of a piano concerto, or may reflect the feeling of a phrase, or of a whole orchestral work. A drawing or print may also refer to a musical score, as part of a narrative about his sculpture. The contribution poetry makes is similar to that of music, but in more structural terms: pace, pause and break. 'The sculpture most directly influenced by music that I have made so far is Passacaglia 1996, literally a musical composition in slow triple time composed on a repeated base line. I was also thinking of Benjamin Britain's Peter Grimes - the sculpture, for me, is a very direct image from a well known musical score,' Hadcock explains.

Mathematics comes to the fore in planning how a sculpture will work. A curve drawn with a free hand on paper requires more than just good will to make it work in solid three dimensions. Calculating how a sculpture can be segmented into identical shapes, so that casting from a single form may be achieved with economy, needs a mathematical mind. This may sound a stultifying process, but Hadcock works it with visual vitality, so that the sculpture remains free and dynamic, unrestrained and immediate. He works creatively with number, as in Fibonacci numbers and the Golden Section, based on his own body height in many of his sculptures.

Charles Hadcock's large and monumental sculptures relate to architecture, but show equally well in more natural environments. When working at his studio in Bermondsey, London, he regularly visited churches designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor (1661-1736), delighting in their proportion, design and construction. He looked at the work of Victorian engineers, and the way in which iron structures function, how components were held together - the design and construction being open - bolts and all, and for a time he appropriated their methodology. 'The Hawksmoor church that has had particular influence on my work is Christ Church, Spitalfields,' says Hadcock. 'I am particularly keen on the huge keystones he employed at the centre of archways, over an alcove or void. They are both structural and sculptural, and their scale and design seems to draw in light.' He had an exhibition in Hawksmoor's St George's Church, Bloomsbury in [date], which was particularly special for him. A particularly successful architectural piece, one of Hadcock's largest commissions to date, is Cantus 2002, commissioned by Scottish Widows and shown in a public courtyard outside their premises in Shoe Lane, London.

The first multiple, repeated form, in his sculpture (a form taken from polystyrene packaging) was used in Endless Frieze 1996. Casts from a single item were attached end to end, high on the wall in a linear arrangement, emulating the system used by Constantine Brancusi in his vertical Endless Column 1937-38. The multiple, whether made by Hadcock or appropriated by him from elsewhere, emerges in his work from time to time. One of the small sculptures in this exhibition, the two-piece composition Motif 1998, illustrates this point.

Taking a roughly traditional stance towards making sculpture, Charles Hadcock makes card and plaster models to try out ideas, realising some as maquettes before embarking on work on a larger scale. His small sculptures, however, are not usually preceded by maquettes, and in turn maquettes may be made after the production of similar pieces realised on a monumental scale. Drawings, apart from drawn notes in his sketchbook, are largely made about a sculpture, during or even after the work is completed. Drawing is Hadcock's way of thinking about form - a route towards understanding his work in three dimensions, as well as helping him to progress, and define what he wants to achieve in the next sculpture.

The first of Hadcock's new sculptures - this exhibition marks their first showing - is Split Stone 2006. This and the other new works in the show were driven by seeing rooms full of patterns for hydro turbines and industrial pumps, at Gilbert Gilkes and Gordon Limited, a Lancashire-based industrial engineering business, established in 1853. Hadcock had been put in touch with the company by local pattern makers G M Technical Patterns, who make the basic structure of the patterns for his large and monumental sculptures. 'I saw these extraordinary patterns for the interiors of water turbines on G M's workshop floor,' said Hadcock, adding that when he visited Gilkes and saw their store, it was for him like stepping into an Aladdin's cave of possibilities for sculptures. He was also interested in modern small-scale harnessing of hydroelectric power, having acquired a mill on the outskirts of Preston. He secured the loan of a number of patterns from Gilkes, and began to work them into his sculpture, combining their forms with others that he had been developing. A small water turbine became the fossil revealed in Split Stone, in an act that metaphorically returned the form that inspired the turbine, to its original source.

The transformation of one item to another, one form to another, is an abiding concern for Hadcock, and may be seen throughout his work from the early days. In his next sculpture, Transformation 2006 this concept really gets going. The patterns that serve this piece were originally in two parts, the front and back of a turbine, which when cast became a single entity. The sculpture gives a view that is never seen in its industrial state, as it is the inner workings of a utilitarian item. It has required the eye of an artist to reveal its inherent beauty.

In Palaeozoic Still Life 2006, Hadcock has become more playful, taking small 'rocks' in which an inner space, like the inside of a mould, articulates an object that could be cast. The exterior of the rocks look as if they are pitted by worm- holes, indicating random interiors, but in truth the inner cavities are meticulously engineered.

The same qualities of external randomness contrasting with the precision of the interior form, almost, but not quite hidden from view, may be found in Vessel 2006. Here Hadcock has arrived at a moment of knowing the elements with which he is working very well indeed, and has taken the forms into another realm - one that is entirely his own. The semi-concealed contours of the pattern inform the outer shape of the sculpture, a spiralling vessel with a surface as rough and weathered as exposed limestone rocks. Moreover, the square opening to the vessel's curving neck resonates with the polished square section end-pieces in Sesqui, Accord and Sextus: movement and pause, crescendo, then silence. 'As with all my heavy, cast iron works, I am trying to bring everything together in one piece - a single entity that sums everything up. Having a cavity, or hollow, light and mass all in one work means it becomes self contained - a celebration of the multiple within a single form.'

In his drawings and black and white prints, Charles Hadcock engages with movement and economy of line. Each piece is made in the way a Japanese calligrapher works. A long moment with the clean sheet of paper in front of him, ink-filled brush in hand, then the drawing, made in less than a minute, is completed in just a few strokes. Not all drawings work, the success rate is low and those allowed to survive have been highly selected. Some that Hadcock considers to be of particular significance are translated into screen prints, a process he has recently started to explore, and which form a significant part of the exhibition, echoing and referencing a number of the sculptures. The screen prints of the series Blueprints are different, they are a mix of diagrammatic and written instruction: 'If in doubt ask!' The prints also feature plans of patterns for sculpture, and its assembly. These detailed formulae are overlaid by free and expressive drawings of the final piece, or a vision for something in the future. The contrast of measured detailing and unbound, liberated marking is dramatic in prints that are generally close in tone, occasionally vibrantly contrasting.

When Hadcock moved from London to Lancashire in 1999 he embarked on an A2A (Artists' Access to Art Schools) course at Preston University. This introduced him to printmaking, and in fact he was able to take it further, as the University encouraged artists to have further access to the printmaking facilities and the expertise of the technicians during regular evening sessions. All forms of printmaking were covered. Finding the printing process similar in essence to making sculpture - prints, like sculpture, require planning and often many levels of processing before the final result is achieved - Hadcock was inspired to set up his own screen-printing workshop where all the prints in this exhibition have been made. 'I found that making this new body of work in print was most stimulating, and it has given me a new method of working that also feeds my sculpture.'

Arriving at a new platform from which more of is art may grow, is a significant point of any artist. For Charles Hadcock, the excitement and the possibilities generated through his work to date are legion.

Ann Elliott