The 10-gram Challenge, Thomas Dane Gallery

The premise of the 10-gram Challenge was elegantly simple: participating sculptors were given ten grams of wax to make a model, which was then cast in bronze. The Royal Society of Sculptors has run it as a fundraiser for several years, but the 2024 edition moved to Thomas Dane Gallery – one of London's most respected contemporary art spaces – and brought together a remarkable group of leading sculptors including Antony Gormley, Grayson Perry, Conrad Shawcross, Cathie Pilkington RA, and others. 

Working with purposeful restraint forces a kind of concentrated thinking that feels entirely different from working at scale. What you lose in material presence you must recover through precision of idea. There is nowhere to hide with ten grams of wax – no monumentality to rely on, no weight to do the work for you. The challenge is to make something that could sit in the hand at scale and still insist on being looked at. 

The event at Thomas Dane Gallery which ran from the 23-24th October was one of those rare occasions when the conversation in the room felt as significant as the objects in it – a reminder that sculpture here at an intimate scale had to stand its ground with a community of people thinking seriously about the same questions from many different positions. 

For my sculpture, I returned to the horse which has featured in my work for several years, as a vehicle to explore traditional heraldic imagery and contexts, often seen in our public spaces. I reinvent these as intimate artistic explorations of materiality and colour. In these playful, aesthetic moments of transformation, we can also look to reimagine ideals which have been previously elevated in public spaces, including patriarchy and power. 

The challenge of creating something statuesque and with the same nod to such recurring themes, with a minimal use of material was enticing. In this sculpture, the horse head appears precariously balanced but retains a sense of stature. 

As a former trustee of the Society, the 10-gram challenge has been a practical and fun way to continue to contribute towards the Society’s mission to lead the conversation about sculpture. 

the heraldic position, 2024 
Unique work, cast in bronze, approx. 9.6x6.1x1.5 cm