Artist Statement

I have worked in a public setting for thirty- five years designing and making gates, sculptures and outdoor furniture that endeavour to bring the user a sense of engagement with the unique qualities of a given place. I develop techniques in tandem with ideas, and ideas come from new construction techniques and objects that I buy from the scrap yard. These I incorporate with new materials to fulfil my vision or any given brief.

I aim in my relief work such as opaque gates, to create fluidity and subtle qualities of a painting with the rigidity of a motorway crash barrier. Commissions feed me with new experiences and insights into other people’s lives where introspection provides a holistic perspective covering anything from the construction of a coat hook to a monument.

I am interested in pattern in the environment forming a backdrop for the subconscious to associate thoughts and feelings more freely; to make connections with the languages of the natural world.

portrait by Alun Callender • aluncallender.com

Won’t be Druv

a film by Michael Smith and Maxy Bianco

featuring Christian Funnell

Created by filmmaker, writer and poet Michael Smith, former presenter of the BBC’s Culture Show, and his long term collaborator Maxy Bianco. ‘Won’t Be Druv’ uncovers some of the secrets of Newhaven and explores why this gritty industrial town is a haven for artists, makers and creators.

'Won't be Druv’ is a tribute to my adopted home of Sussex and its proud traditions of free-thinking and creativity, a short film about that old spirit of independence, inventiveness and artistry sprouting up through the cracks of the marginal and forgotten places, in this case in the dockside warehouses of Newhaven.

Though at first glance Newhaven may look unloved and rough around the edges, it has become fertile ground for artists and innovators to work quietly and cheaply below the radar, away from the prying eyes and rising rents that end up stifling this precarious and fragile kind of activity.

At a time when this way of living is being more and more squeezed, it's reassuring to see there's still room for it in places like this. Long it may continue.' - Michael Smith.