André Wallace

To recoup his creative energies Wallace embarked on a period of drawing, to nurture and recharge the private self at the temporary cost of neglecting the public persona. This has proved to be a rewarding strategy: not only has it produced fine drawing, but these in turn has led to Wallace’s first etchings and then back into three-dimensions, with small sculptures of rare intimacy and presence.
Andrew Lambirth

Andre Wallace’s work shows a total transformation of the observed – into a different medium and on to quite another scale – without for a moment being academic.
Edward Lucie Smith

Andre Wallace’s compelling conte drawings form a part of a Show, at Stephen Lacy Gallery and a solo show at Cartwright Hall, Bradford.
Karen Wright – Modern Painters

Drawing is a way of defining thought, of ordering a chaos of formal and aesthetic impulses, as much as a means of discovering or recording images.
Andrew Lambirth

The work in this exhibition constitutes an exploration of form and meaning inextricably intertwined. Wallace speculates on the individual conduct of life by way of sculptures and drawings which evoke the rites of passage. The personal odyssey of existence is alluded to in images of pared down energy and simplicity.
Andrew Lambirth

Drawing tells us something about the way in which the sculptor wants us to look at his work. Wallace… tends to see human beings as functioning parts of a social unit – his drawings present the figures in terms of an event or an occasion. I have been amused to notice ... the compulsion which visitors feel to provide an interpretation to invent a story.
Edward Lucie Smith

...but in another he mounts the five etching plates in heavy pewter surrounds as floor sculptures, all reflecting torsoes and highlights.
Andrew Lambirth

Wallace's first etchings are very much sculptor's prints in their manifest physically. Not only does the artist in one series of images cut the copper sheet into the literal shape of the body he wishes to depict, but in another he mounts the five etching plates in heavy pewter surrounds as floor sculpture.

The personal odyssey of existence is alluded to in images of pared-down energy and simplicity.
Andrew Lambirth

The large drawing entitled Three Heads, done in conte and wash, represents a symbolic nexus of past, present and future. A head-dress is juxtaposed with a visor and a space helmet, and Wallace chooses to show us only the head – the individual in microcosm.
Andrew Lambirth

I have lived with three of Andre’s stone heads for a decade now. They are beautifully stylised; very calm; and I shall never tire of them.
Dame Stephanie Shirley Founder, Prior’s Court School

The boat has become a framework, just as a picture has its boundaries, so the rigid structure of the boat provides a formal contrast to the figures held by its compact shape.
Sue O’ Brien

A simple boating incident in Dockland, or a metaphorical statement commenting on the political and economic scene?
Graham Hughes – Arts Review

The Boating series could just be about people in boats, but the work has classical references, to the Boatman taking people along the river of life or the Ferryman who transports from this world to the next.
Sue O’Brien

Wallace speculates on the individual conduct of life by way of sculptures and drawings which evoke the rights of passage.
Andrew Lambirth

The form is human and the activity is familiar, but the images go far beyond the level of imitation into the complexities of harmony and balance of form and metaphoric meaning.
Sue O’Brien