Born, 1958, Cardiff, Wales
Ross Lovegrove is a sculptor of ordinary things. He is an artisan with a knack for infusing everyday objects with an alluring poetry. He is also simply an industrial designer, an influential designer of functional everyday objects, but he is also a forward-thinking creator of objects possessed with an utterly unexpected beauty.
Ross Lovegrove’s rotation moulded polyethylene Transit Furniture Concept is distinctively sculptural, and noteworthy for its strikingly organic sensibility. Somewhat paradoxically – they are just chairs after all – his creations don’t really make one want to sit down. Rather, one is tempted to just stand, to observe, to simply partake in the delirious charm of his furniture’s cohesive form The fact that Ross Lovegrove is a great admirer of post-War British sculpture probably accounts for something here. He expresses deep fondness for two immense, if rather diverse, sculptural talents: Henry Moore and Anish Kapoor. In his Transit furniture range, the fluid progression of Ross Lovegrove’s design shares something of Anish Kapoor’s fascination for monolithic, mono-coloured organic forms. Working with fluid shapes and informed by persuasive new technologies, Ross Lovegrove’s work is emerging as a benchmark designer for the twenty-first century.
Source: Sean O’Toole, Design Indaba