Buttress is conceived as a vividly coloured architectural structure. As the name suggests, the sculpture is about buttressing – a structure that lend support to other structures. Buttress is formed from a rearrangement of bricks painted by Kitchener-based street artists: graffiti, often seen as being symptomatic of a dysfunctional cityscape becomes an integral ingredient to a structure that appears to lend stability to the existing architecture. Against the uniform colouring of the original brick building, the vibrant colours of Buttress create an exhilarating contrast.

 

Andrew Burton was born in London and now lives in Newcastle, UK where he is Professor of Fine Art at Newcastle University. Recent projects include: Bithooras par haath pa Chaap: Making Bithooras (National Craft Museum, New Delhi 2011) – a project that involved collaborating with villagers from Delhi, India to create a series of architectural structures made from the cow dung that is regularly used for fuel in the area; Tierra del Fuego an installation using bricks reclaimed from the beaches in Xiamen, China (Chinese European Art Center, Xiamen, 2011) and Pen a monumental sculpture that involved restacking 60 tonnes of bricks in the Picardy landscape in Northern France. (S’Imbriquer, Maladrerie St Lazaire, Beauvais, France 2011) His work has been commissioned for the Shanghai World Expo, 2010, for the British Council in Delhi and for the Clayarch Architectural Museum , Gimhae, South Korea.