PPhotograph: Rebecca Barnard

​Martin Cody  MRSS
b.1951 UK

1968-69  Organised and performed in events known as Arts Laboratories based in Norwich and Great Yarmouth, Norfolk.

These were an amalgam of rock concert, poetry readings and experimental theatre.
Mid-70’s  Foundation course in Hull Regional College of Art then Liverpool Polytechnic, Department of Sculpture where

I achieved an Honours degree in 1979.
1979-80 Awarded the John Moores Fellowship in Sculpture from Liverpool College of Art and Design.
During this year I was employed part-time by Liverpool Playhouse as a carpenter.
1981 Worked at the Young Vic Theatre,Waterloo,London, making scenery and sets plus directing a play for the Theatre in Education department there.
1984  Postgraduate qualification as an Art Therapist, (now Art Psychotherapist), followed by a career in NHS Adult Mental Health services in London and Birmingham until 2011.
2014  Resumed making sculpture and have since shown sculpture, installation and drawing.
2022  Selected for membership of Royal Society of Sculptors
2025  Spike Island Associate,Bristol

​

​Statement

​My activities as a sculptor fall into two, complimentary approaches.
In one mode, I bring pre-fabricated components to the site and these I think of as a sort of company of actors,a kind of performative system whereby materials find a way into,through and across the space unfolding in fits and starts as different materials and ways of constructing come into play, more akin to an event than an object. I prefer the viewer to have a low key entanglement with this event-like condition.

I do not aim for immersive, spectacular or monumental impact.
Every now and again, I press the pause button on this enquiring movement to solidify a moment of process; to do close work with forms and materials. This phase freezes the performative process and I constitute more object-like pieces bringing the viewer into a different proximity to the form, materials and scale of a sculpture.

 
Martin Cody

MRSS