The Art and Soul Gallery at 29 High Street in Rye now has a very interesting exhibit of reconstructed bodies and heads and driftwood models by scientific artist Richard Neave.
He trained at the Hastings School of Art and in 1967 joined the Middlesex Hospital in London as a medical artist. Later he became involved in the study of ancient Egyptian mummies at the Manchester University museum, where he reconstructed three ancient Egyptians.
Since 1989 he was also closely involved in the development and practice of forensic image comparison for face mapping.
He retired from the Manchester University in 2000, moving back to his native Sussex in 2013, where he continues, in the more relaxed atmosphere of our town, practicing his art which he describes as “sometimes being more of a whimsical nature than in the past”.
Some of his work, past and present, can be seen in the gallery including a beautiful boat, horse and figure of Christ made from driftwood he found on Winchelsea beach.
There are three of his figurative bronze pieces, two of which are reconstructions.
One is a head of a Saxon woman with a partly dissected face and the other is of a Scottish king. The third piece is the anatomical figure of a male which was the ecorche (sculpted or drawn figure showing muscles of the body without skin, study for a larger piece) for a much bigger work now in Greece.
Richard says: “I suppose my work oscillates between the two extremes of the very figurative which I do for others, to the very simple I tend to do for myself”.
Photos: Emma Miller, exhibition curator
Photos: Emma Miller, exhibition curator