John Gibbons
The Ghost / Within
8 - 18 April 2026

Castor x The Shop at Sadie Coles HQ. 62 Kingly Street, W1B 5QN



Images / Press Release

John Gibbons' works from a large industrial studio in Basildon, Essex, inhabiting a space sandwiched between distribution warehouses and light industry units. He’s been based here since the urban renewal of the Deptford arches. Arriving on an uncharacteristically warm early spring day, it didn’t take long to find the studio, nestled between two blue shipping containers is a totemic stainless steel form spanning two trestles smeared in what seemed like vaseline. The shutter is wide open revealing the true nature of this particular warehouse on the industrial estate.

I walk in past various hand tools, metallic forms and winches hanging from the ceiling until I see John Gibbons emerge from the small staff canteen room boxed off from the vast open space, a remnant from the buildings former occupants. John is dressed head to toe in a green rubber suit and wellington boots, he tells me the sculpture outside is currently being cleaned in a pickling process. A particularly aggressive chemical process which explains the doubling up of two pairs of gloves on top of one another.

The main studio space is dotted with large sculptures currently in production, 3 metre tall objects alongside a selection I’ve requested to view. Left alone in the room for a few minutes whilst John put the kettle on, these towering forms feel in dialogue and I can imagine John moving between them adding, grinding and evolving their forms in unison, my head goes to Ted Hughes’ book The Iron Man with the sculptures potential to come to life.

Beyond the works is a stud wall with muted, softer forms looming over the top. I request to view another work from the store, walking into this space at the back of the studio I’m confronted by numerous cotton tarpaulin clad objects at a monumental scale. They remind me of plants from a botanical garden wrapped in their winter coats to stave off frost. The shiny stainless steel forms have softened in their new temporary skin, here to stave off dust from the cavernous working space. There's something strange in seeing a sculpture which is usually only bones and occasionally skin, wearing layers. Their personalities are muted as they become a collective mass, like bodies squeezed onto the tube at rush hour.

This proved tricky when trying to locate the missing sculpture; It’s here somewhere / He’s mid-height / This one's around 1 metre 20 / No I think it's in the other storage... There’s something Ghost like in these stored sculptures, akin to a bedsheet drapped over the actor in early cinema horror movies. The idea of the Ghost continues to emerge the more I think about Gibbons’ work, his abstract forms hold a trace of the world around us without fully acknowledging a source. They mirror an inquisitive mind absorbing the sights and sounds of the geographical and political landscape. Sometimes the titles drop a hint but the soft focus from the monochrome stainless steel finish reflect the light and surrounding giving them a sense of weightlessness, transparency and temporarily, all qualities not typically associated with metal. Gibbons’ treatment of stainless steel nods heavily to mark making and painting, the weld marks feel gestural, interrupting their solid forms. Brushing, etching, carving and drilling into the surfaces gives a painterly quality, a technicolour in monochrome, a sign of life lived like that seen in skin or bark on a tree.

More literal Ghosts appear within the works, that of Gibbons mentors and friends in American sculptor David Smith and Anthony Caro both from whom Gibbons inherited steel stock from on their passing. By integrating this steel into his work, Gibbons is compliicit in adding to a material past of unrealised potential and a weighty art history, closing the circle. The language of the steel has timeless connotations, with a shiny newness going hand in hand with nostaglia from the golden age of manufacturing. As Mark Fisher wrote on Hauntology; we find ourselves in a period of cultural stagnation through a slow cancellation of the future which has led to a reliance on nostalgia and revivalism. Against a current background of global political unrest, it’s easy to look back at the optimism for the future written about in the 1970’s with mass manufacturing, the motor industry and space race all going at a pace, and wonder what happened?

Trends in music and art come back around remixed and repackaged for a new youth, even 90’s fashion returned with renewed vigour. Look long enough and the ghosts of our pasts will always return with a comforting sense of knowing.

John Gibbons was born in Ennis, Co. Clare, Ireland, studying at Limerick School of Art and St Martin's School of Art. In a career spanning over 50 years Gibbons has continued to probe and investigate form, weight and materiality. Having exhibited international with solo exhibitions at National Portrait Gallery, London; Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin; Kettles Yard, Cambridge; The Whitworth, Manchester; The Serpentine Gallery, London, as well as galleries and museums across Ireland, Spain, Germany, Hungary and the US. His work features in collections including Tate, London; Art Council England; Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon; Fitzwiliiam Museum, Cambridge; Kasser Art Foundation, US; Contemporary Art Society, London; Sculpture at Goodwood.

Contact info@castor.gallery for all enquiries