ARTIST:

Tom Thayer

Crossing the Methane River
Tom Thayer

The sculptures’ fragile construction and susceptibility to small breezes – even the movement of visitors to the gallery causes minor nods and swivels – demands a certain kind of engagement from the viewer: the cautious contemplation of one unwilling to disturb a creature in its natural habitat.

Callow Air’s Veil
Tom Thayer

Thayer’s interest is in the transformative power of visual art: found scraps of paper become lyrical metaphor, and works on the wall seem to overstep their boundaries, as though slipping between the real and imagined.

Nature Scene
Tom Thayer
Congregation
Tom Thayer
Crossing the Methane River
Tom Thayer
Callow Air’s Veil
Tom Thayer
Bough Geometry
Tom Thayer
Bough Geometry
Tom Thayer
Nature Scene
Tom Thayer
Nature Scene
Tom Thayer
Nature Scene
Tom Thayer

Tom Thayer’s work is both literally light and is about the condition of lightness: birds, appropriately, are his chosen metaphor. Like the sculptor Brancusi, who made use of birds’ associative qualities – soaring, skimming, diving – as the visual correlative of the modern mind, Thayer finds parallels between his subject’s physical delicacy and a human sense of fragility and transience.

Congregation
Tom Thayer
Congregation
Tom Thayer

He has said that he aims to “isolate and extract some of our most touching qualities about being alive, and examine them for a moment.” Using corrugated cardboard loosely coloured in crayon, Thayer constructs spindly variants on birds of various kinds, suspending them from strings like marionettes.

Stillness
Tom Thayer

Text by Ben Street

Save Your Cart
Share Your Cart
0
    0
    Your Cart
    Your cart is emptyReturn to Shop

    Search the Saatchi Gallery website

    Thank you for your enquiry!

    Your message was sent and one of our Admin team will respond as soon as possible.

    If you have an urgent question, please call our front desk on 020 7811 3070.

    For more information on how we store and use your data please view our privacy policy here. You can unsubscribe from our newsletters at any time by clicking on the links below the emails we send you.

    Essential Information Before Your Visit:
    Click Plan Your Visit for full information on upcoming closures.

    Register for email updates
    Be the first to hear about the latest Saatchi Gallery exhibitions, events, offers and news