Artists - KEVIN OSMOND - Biography

Osmond was born in Chelmsford, Essex in 1968. He grew up in the small village of Castle Hedingham, in the north of the county. Leaving school aged 16, without any qualifications, he went to work on a traditional apprenticeship in cabinet making and restoration.

He spent two years travelling Australasia, Asia and Europe. On his return he began a course in Fine Art at West Thames College. Hooked, he took a degree in sculpture at Chelsea, following this with a masters degree at the Royal College of Art – the first person in the whole of his extended family to gain a university education. In 2000 he sold most of the work in his final show at the RCA, and went on to win the Penguin Books Sculpture Bursary and the Credit Suisse First Boston Award.

Through investigations into the material and immaterial, weight and weightlessness, surface and space, Osmond deals with notions of metamorphosis and evolution. He creates biomorphic and geometric structures – journeys into microcosms and macrocosms that are united in their fragility.

An industrious and ambitious artist with a craftsman’s dedication to quality of construction and finish, Osmond is constantly looking for new materials to use, as well as applying new techniques to well known materials, seeking to create a sense of space and scale in his sculptures. He has worked on both large and fine detailed work for public and private commissions, and exhibitions.

His interest in the way we interact with our environment, and the resources we use and waste, has already been the genesis of several of Osmond’s sculptures. It has seen him make works with some of the most humble items in our culture – plastic cups, paperclips, fragments of styrofoam and even tiling spacers. The fact that each of us creates some 52 tonnes of waste material in our lifetime is the starting point for a new public art project in West Cumbria for which he has been short-listed.

In 2001 Osmond set up his first studio in Tulse Hill, London. Since then he has shown in a number of group and solo exhibitions, including: Outsized at MoDA, Disposable at the Economist building, Astrolix at Penguin Books, and Together Again at the Pumphouse Gallery. His most recent solo show was in 2004 at Space Station Sixty-five gallery in East Dulwich. He has also developed his own website: www.kevinosmond.com.