The Stratford Gallery is delighted to present Gathering, a new collection of sculpture by British artist Roger Hardy, launching on 19 October.

Hardy’s quietly powerful figures are created primarily from wood gathered from the forests, estuaries, coastline and boatyards surrounding his Suffolk home. Weathered, fractured and shaped before it ever reaches the studio, the material arrives carrying evidence of another existence.

Rather than attempting to erase that history, Hardy works with it.

Born in 1969, Hardy trained in Graphic Design at Kingston upon Thames College of Art and Design and worked as a designer in London before moving back to rural Suffolk in 2000 and developing his sculptural practice. His work has subsequently been exhibited extensively, including at Flowers Gallery, Watts Gallery, JaggedArt, Beaux Arts Bath and Britten Pears Arts at Snape Maltings.

Roger Hardy does remarkably little to make us recognise a human being.

This extreme economy is one of the great strengths of Hardy’s sculpture. By removing almost everything specific — age, expression, clothing, identity — his figures cease to represent particular individuals and begin instead to suggest something much broader about being human.

The wood itself is central to this.

Hardy gathers material from the Suffolk landscape: fallen and weathered timber, woodland fragments, estuary wood and pieces shaped by water, time and decay. Much of it has already been worked upon by both nature and people before reaching his studio. Hardy describes his process as one of revelation rather than imposition: carving, abrading and responding to what is already present.

The resulting sculptures can feel archaeological. Their elongated forms, rough surfaces and elemental construction might belong to no particular period at all. There are echoes of votive figures, pilgrims, travellers and ancient effigies, yet their emotional register is unmistakably contemporary.

This becomes particularly powerful when Hardy brings figures together.