The swirling steel forms Neil Dawson has produced for Silver Linings play with ideas of weight, movement and volume. His use of precise mathematical formulae and a single, repeated motif works with carefully selected colour combinations to create multiple illusions of mass and space.

In Cloud 4 curved construction girders appear frozen in free fall and Dawson’s enjoyment of the paradoxical is obvious as he draws together medium, motif, outline and title. The delicacy of the laser-cut steel and the use of negative space give this work a lightness of being that belies the ‘heavy’ motif. Beneath the work, the reflected glow of the pink under-painting creates volume out of thin air and distorted shadows thrown by the lacy girders expand the planes of the work beyond its physical mass.

The ‘swirls’ that form Dawson’s Cloud works are elongated, stretched, and flipped. While retaining an overall cohesion of form, the swirls ‘break free’ from the controlled symmetry Dawson has explored previously in his Vortex series. The eye follows the shapes as they morph into one another and this sense of movement is heightened by the play of light and shadow across and behind the sculpture.