Artist: Nicola Hicks

This exhibition marks the third presentation of the work of Nicola Hicks following her inclusion in Presence: The Figure in British Postwar and Contemporary Sculpture at Messums West in 2024 and, earlier this year, an inaugural solo show at Messums London entitled Love.

Our ongoing commitment to showcasing examples of British liminal sculpture which increase our proximity to nature and our understanding of our environment is reflected in the work of Nicola Hicks. Coupled with this, her work epitomises excellence in making and has empathy at its core, elements central to all our programming.

In addition, this exhibition extends Messums established support in presenting the work of Nicola Hicks’ family. Hicks’ mother, the portraitist and animal sculptor, Jill Tweed, and her father, the painter and jazz pianist Philip Hicks, were both shown by David Messum Fine Art. Sculpture by Nicola Hicks’ daughter Edie Flowers is currently on show together with work by Nicola in the Totemic exhibition at Messums London.

Born in London in 1960, Nicola Hicks studied at Chelsea School of Art (1979-1982), before gaining an MA from the Royal College of Art, London, in 1985. She defied the dominance of abstract art in the 1980s, forging a path centred on figuration and raw natural beauty. Working mainly with plaster and straw, her final sculptures are cast in bronze – the contrast between the materials used to construct the maquettes with the solidity and permanence of bronze imbuing the work with a simultaneous feeling of fragility and strength. Hicks is unafraid of exploring darker content in her work, and her often monumental sculptures routinely use anthropomorphism to raise questions about human and animal nature, depicting humanised animals and beast-like humans. ‘I love the magical feeling of having something evolve at my fingertips’, she says; ‘making something live that hasn’t lived before’.

Hicks’ work features in prestigious collections and public spaces worldwide, including the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, and Battersea Park in London. She was awarded an MBE in 1995 for her contribution to the arts and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Sculptors in 2023.