"My work is very much nearer to nature and has life like a tree or plant. My pieces respond to atmosphere like natural vegetation ... They grow under the sun, breathe open air, swing like trees and vibrate like leaves."
Avtarjeet Singh Dhanjal (1940-2025) was a British sculptor and multimedia artist from India, born on April 10, 1940, in Dalla, Punjab, into a crafts-oriented family. Dhanjal's early experiences as a carpenter, blacksmith, and signwriter deeply influenced his artistic sensibilities. A major concern of his work was to explore the tensions between industrial materials and processes and those of the natural world. The materials and processes have a wider, metaphorical resonance and also address tensions in culture and history, in part derived from his own experience of India and Britain.
In 1965, Dhanjal pursued formal art education at the Government College of Arts in Chandigarh, a city renowned for its architectural design by Le Corbusier. During his studies, he moved from figurative to abstract works in wood, stone and metal, and began experimentations with kinetic work.
After graduating in 1970, he travelled to East Africa, 'sketching and selling' his way through Ethiopia, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania and Kenya, before securing a teaching post at Kenyatta University College in Nairobi.
In 1974, he moved to London to take up a post-graduate course in sculpture at Saint Martin's School of Art under William Tucker. His innovative work with aluminium caught the attention of the Alcan Aluminium Company, leading to a year-long project at their Tipton factory, where he created dynamic spiral sculptures utilising the material's flexibility and responsiveness to wind, drawing on concepts from his time in India and Africa.
Dhanjal's artistic philosophy centered on creating works that fostered silence, stillness, and contemplation. He believed that true creativity required disengagement from the distractions of contemporary society, aiming instead to attune to inner silence. His sculptures often combined materials like wood, aluminium, and stone, reflecting a harmonious blend of Eastern and Western artistic traditions.
In 1978, he organised a trip to study the folk arts and crafts of the Punjab and a sculpture symposium in 1980. This research was to have a profound effect on his ideas, his affinities with Indian artistic traditions and culture and on his subsequent approach to sculpture.
From this point onwards, Dhanjal's practice evolved into large-scale public commissions and projects in Britain, India, Europe and the USA. Notable works from this period include Grown in the Field (1977) at the University of Warwick, symbolising the stages of a tree's growth, Contribution in Banbury, Oxfordshire (1981), Dunstall Henge, Wolverhampton (1986) and Remains of a Pyramid (circa 1990) in Birmingham's Senneleys Park.
He founded the Punjabi Institute exchange programme for students and teachers in Punjab and Shropshire and served as a trustee of the South Asian Visual Arts Festival, Sampad, and as a member of the West Midlands Arts Council.
His work was featured in significant exhibitions, including 'Between Two Cultures' at the Barbican Centre in 1982, 'Third World Within' at Brixton Art Gallery in 1986, and 'The Other Story' at the Hayward Gallery from 1989 to 1990. In 1997, inIVA staged a retrospective of his work at Pitzhanger Manor and Gallery in London, accompanied by a monograph authored by Brian McAvera.
Dhanjal's artistic philosophy centered on creating works that fostered silence, stillness, and contemplation. He believed that true creativity required disengagement from the distractions of contemporary society, aiming instead to attune to inner silence. His sculptures often combined materials like wood, aluminium, and stone, reflecting a harmonious blend of Eastern and Western artistic traditions.
From the mid-1980s, Dhanjal lived in Ironbridge, Shropshire, where he continued to explore creativity beyond traditional sculpture, delving into photography, installation art, and writing until his death in 2025.