Robert Harding was born in Southport, Lancashire and lives and works in Llantrisant. He won the Sculpture Prize at the 2005 and 2007 Welsh Artist of the Year events and was awarded the first Wakelin Purchase Award at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea in 2000. He has exhibited internationally since 1981, the most recent being an exhibition of Welsh Art in two galleries in Dusseldorf in 2015 and he was also Artist in Residence at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, USA in 1994. He has undertaken a number of commissions for public and private sites and the occasional presentation piece such as the Madog Award given at the Hay on Wye Literature Festival (2003). He has organized and curated seven exhibitions to date, the most recent being Meltdown (2009), Mission Galley, Swansea, and has written widely on sculpture for various magazines – eg ‘The Heat is Rising’, CCQ, Issue 7, 2015. Having done some preliminary research for the Henry Moore Foundation on the 1950-1952 experiments Moore conducted in DIY bronze casting, he is currently expanding this to cover that whole post-war generation of sculptors who conducted similar experiments. Robert Harding is a long-time member of the Welsh Group and the 56 Group Wales and is a part-time lecturer in sculpture at the Carmarthen School of the Arts.
Member Since 1997Over the years I have made sculpture in numerous media. To reflect the ‘avant guarde’ founding principles of the 56 Group, I have chosen to show on the website work that recontexturalises money. A number of these are the product of my recent direct involvement with the casting process – such objects need ‘a hands on’ approach during the mould-making and pouring sequences and would be very difficult to manage within a professional foundry. Others rely on the ability to weld the now debased (all coins now below 20p are steel based) currency.