Simon Max Bannister

Born in South Africa, 1982.  Based in Wanaka, New Zealand.

Simon Max Bannister’s sculpture is often speared by the ecological crisis, with a knowledge that species and habitats are threatened by man’s insatiable fire. It is mostly in his work process where the poetry reveals itself. From splinters of invasive timber, he constructs indigenous birds, nests and wings. These wooden creations become the kindling for a unique lost cast technique, where the incineration of shape becomes the mould for the final sculpture. These negative spaces are cast with bronze, thereby immortalising the species that have become so significant to him. They are naturalistic yet lean toward abstraction as the figures hover between dissolution and form.

View full bio