Ray Haydon - Twenty One: Preview Catalogue

Opening - Thursday 12th November - 5.30-7pm

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
- W B Yeats, “The Second Coming”

Ray Haydon’s Twenty One celebrates a significant milestone: twenty-one years of continuous exhibiting with Sanderson, a partnership that has supported the development of his distinctive sculptural practice. Since the gallery first presented his work in 2005, Haydon has continued to refine his vocabulary of line, movement and materials, creating sculptures of remarkable energy and precision.

Bringing together fourteen works, the exhibition explores Haydon’s enduring fascination with how a line drawn in three dimensions can shape and suspend space. It also reflects the rhythms and movement of Te Moana-nui-ā-Toi / the Hauraki Gulf, where he lives and works. Those natural dynamics are brought into the gallery, frozen in time.

The central tension exists between the movement and its arrest. A line that seems to travel through space is also a fixed object; what looks spontaneous depends on precision and control. Haydon’s sculptures hold these opposites together in counterpoint, making that solidity the means by which a fleeting gesture can remain permanently visible and tactile.

Haydon is best known for his ribbon works: fluid, looping forms that appear caught mid-flight, as though capturing the instant a strip of material arcs through the air in the hands of a rhythmic gymnast. In Twenty One, this signature language takes on a fresh dimension in forest-green works made from marine-grade pleather over carbon fibre, extending his recent explorations of colour.

These green ribbons retain the weightlessness and velocity of earlier works, while their lush colour introduces a quietly dramatic, organic quality. Their sweeping gestures evoke both the canopy of a deep rainforest and the movement of kelp beneath the ocean’s surface. The ephemeral rendered permanent.

Alongside the ribbons are new bronze and Corten steel works, demonstrating Haydon’s ability to give solid materials a compelling sense of movement. The Corten pieces, including Travelling IV (2025), Travelling V (2026) and Sentinel (2026), have a grounded, architectural presence, with weathering steel lending warm, earthy tones.

Bronzes such as Current IX (2026), Advance (2025) and Infinity (2026) reveal the striking fluidity Haydon draws from a traditionally weighty medium. Carefully balanced tensions, sprung curves and shaped surfaces give these works a biological, plant-like vitality, enhanced by their cool green verdigris patina.

Haydon’s choice of materials reflects his earlier work as a boat builder, bringing a distinctive practical sensibility to the traditions of minimalist modernism. His experience in jewellery making and furniture construction further honed his eye for detail. This deep understanding of materials informs a hands-on approach: rather than sketching his ideas, he prefers to develop them directly in the medium.

Across these works, Twenty One is both a celebration and a continuation. It honours a sustained relationship between artist and gallery while affirming Haydon’s commitment to sculptural movement and the capacity of a line, set free in space, to carry emotion and rhythm. After twenty-one years, his work remains unmistakable: elegant, ever inventive and alive with the possibilities of form.

- Dr Andrew Paul Wood, Nov 2026