Artist: Hugo Winder-Lind

Robbie von Kampen presents 140 Knights in Silver Armour, a solo exhibition of new works by Hugo Winder-Lind. In creating the exhibition, Winder-Lind challenged himself to expand the boundaries of his practice, choosing to present ambitious sculptural and video work to the public for the first time.

The exhibition borrows its title from the 19th century English fable The Wizard of Alderley Edge. In the fable, a man walking his horse to market meets a wizard who leads him to an underground hidden cave. In the cave, the man finds 140 knights laying in repose. The wizard tells the man that the knights will awaken to fight for England when the country needs them most. Later, when the man returns to find the cave, it has disappeared.

Winder-Lind often works with reclaimed materials, taking cues from the “souls” of the materials and allowing them to guide the deeper sensations of his work. For Winder-Lind, making is a process of instinctual emotional responses, of discovering hidden histories and giving them life, and translating chaos into something discernable as colours, shapes, textures, tastes, and sounds all fight for our attention.

Indeed, it was this material soul that led Winder-Lind to the knight imagery. Many of the works are rendered on reclaimed board that once served as Robbie von Kampen gallery’s sub floor. First intrigued by the boards’ sturdiness and quality, remnants of another era of building, Winder-Lind took the boards to his studio. There, the story began to take shape. Like the knights of Alderly Edge, these boards had been in repose for decades, a source of strength laying in repose.

From this initial kernel of inspiration, Winder-Lind creates an entire world: one towering knight brandishes a silver sword, another is wounded by a piercing arrow, while others gallop on film astride wooden horses. Winder-Lind renders this world in vivid and whimsical detail, and invites the viewer to join.