DR SONIQUE

Nigel Helyer (a.k.a. Dr Sonique) is a Sydney based Sculptor and Sound Artist with an international reputation for his large scale sonic installations, environmental sculpture works and new media projects.
Spinner, 2005 - Anodised aluminum crystalline form with a symmetry of six designed as a passive kinetic work (i.e. it can be rolled on its axis).

"... Although the power of hindsight may be both convenient and illusory, the development of my creative practice to incorporate broad areas of science and technology stems from my childhood.

The small Sussex fishing village in which I spent my formative years contained two significant buildings, significant not for their formal qualities, they were both simple cottages, but because one had been the home of Halley, the astronomer and the other the home of William Blake the poet, these men had been friends. Without being conscious of the fact, I grew up in a cosmos in which the arts and science were intertwined and engaged in conversation, it has marked my endeavours ever since.

In a broader context the cultural and physical landscape of my youth was saturated in the artefacts of science, technology and industry, slowly decaying into a glorious post-industrial stupor that placed the corroded shells of furnaces alongside the ruins of castles in a nostalgic afterglow.

What has followed in terms of a creative practice has simply been a way of dealing with an irrepressible curiosity about the world (rarely restricted to the Art World) and driven by a surfeit of enthusiasm! ..."