Poetry of Steel Jan King

‘The floor for a sculptor is the same as the floor for a dancer,’ says Jan King. ‘It’s the thing that activates your movement. Dancers can’t fly, they have to hit the floor. They come down, they move across, they lift up again – and this is exactly what a sculpture should do. It shouldn’t just sit around. It has to take off and move.’

King may talk like a kinetic sculptor, but none of her works will actually, truly move. The movement is all in the mind of the viewer who watches the way a piece seems to touch the earth lightly and spring back up in a graceful curving line. Even though her favoured material is steel there’s a pervasive sense of lightness about