Capturing Life in Stillness - a look at bronze statues

 

Movement is, for me as an artist, is one of the hardest things to capture. Not just the mechanics of a body in motion, but the feeling of it: the anticipation, the follow-through, the emotional undercurrent that gives it meaning.

Sometimes when you stand in front of a sculpture you feel slightly undone by it. Perhaps it’s because of its scale or subject, but in my case, it's because it seems to achieve something I know is difficult: it has movement.

There is for example a bronze statue in the Jephson Gardens. It is a beautiful and quietly powerful story; John Bridgeman’s The Unknown Refugee.

 

photo courtesy of Annabel Rainbow

Originally commissioned by Parliamentary Committee to commemorate the plight of refugees following the Vietnam War, Bridgeman conceived a fleeing mother, her child slumped over her shoulder. It is an image heavy with urgency, fear, and endurance. Yet in 1984, shifting political tides meant the sculpture was returned to his studio, uncast.

That might have been the end of it, but instead, it became something else. Bridgeman reworked the piece over time, shifting its meaning toward a more universal, timeless figure: the unknown refugee. Plans came and went - Coventry Cathedral among them, but the sculpture remained unrealised in bronze. It was only recently “rescued” from the slow decay of its plaster maquette and installed in Jephson Gardens, where it now stands against the river, quietly echoing the tragedies we continue to witness today. It feels entirely at home there and seems rooted, but not still. Even in its fixed form, it carries motion.

And perhaps that’s what draws me back to sculpture again and again: this paradox. Solidity that suggests movement; weight that implies lightness; stillness that somehow breathes.

Maquette in Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum. Photo courtesy of C Gifford.

At Hidcote in October 2025, one of our Flag members photographed three works that stay with me for similar reasons: The Wish and Riding the Waves by Teresa Wells, and Running Man by Shaun Gagg. All three were cast in bronze or cold cast bronze, and all three attempted, very successfully I think, to capture movement in the human form.

 

Teresa Wells - The Wish. (image courtesy of C Gifford)

Bronze is an unforgiving medium in this respect. Unlike clay or wax, where gestures can be adjusted and reworked with relative immediacy, bronze demands commitment and an investment of time and energy. Every nuance must be resolved before casting, and once cast, the opportunity for alteration is minimal. The process itself: mould-making, wax casting, firing, pouring, introduces layers of translation between the artist’s hand and the final object. Something can easily be lost along the way such as softness, a tension, a fleeting gesture.

Shaun Gagg - Running Man (image courtesy of C Gifford) 

 

And yet, when it works, bronze does something extraordinary. It holds movement in a way that feels both permanent and precarious. In Running Man, Gagg captures that forward lean. A slight imbalance that suggests the next step is already happening. It is not a static figure posed mid-stride; it is a body in transition. You feel the momentum.

Similarly, Wells’ Riding the Waves seems to hover between the forces of gravity and lift, resistance and surrender. The figure is not simply placed in motion; it is shaped by it. Even The Wish, quieter in tone, contains a subtle internal movement - something shifting inward rather than outward, an emotional gesture rather than a physical one.

 

Teresa Wells, Riding The Waves. Photo by C Gifford

Why is bronze so good at conveying emotion and movement? Stone for instance, carries a different kind of authority. It resists movement, or perhaps it absorbs it. Think of classical marble sculptures; there is grace, certainly, but also a sense of inevitability, of forms settling into their final state. Metal, in more industrial contexts, can emphasise structure and line, sometimes at the expense of fluidity.

Bronze sits somewhere in between. It can be both rigid and responsive, capable of describing musculature, tension, and flow with remarkable sensitivity. Its surface can catch light sharply or diffuse it, enhancing the sense of motion or softening it into something more contemplative.

Historically, of course, artists have wrestled with this for centuries. From the dynamism of Hellenistic sculpture to the charged energy of figures by artists like Giacometti or Rodin, the question remains the same: how do you make something that doesn’t move feel alive?

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