Shaun Gagg

Shaun Gagg was born and brought up in the mining village of Wombwell near Barnsley in Yorkshire in 1969. When Shaun was young, he always enjoyed art and was fascinated by Salvador Dali’s work.

Being in possession of a long ladder and with no fear of heights, Shaun would spend much of his free time rock climbing and caving in the Peak District. His fearlessness of heights allowed him to take a job replacing old roof tiles, which led him to be a full-time roofer and meet a magical substance called slate. He began creating sculptures with slate or lumps of sandstone. There were often skips full of large pieces of slate, which came from roof-tile companies. They would often tell him, “Take as much as you want lad!”, which sounded like music to his ears.

People would describe Shaun’s sculptures as, “very Barbra Hepworth”. Although, Shaun didn’t even know who she was at this point! He eventually looked her up and discovered some of her work at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, less than ten miles from where he lived. These visits to Y.S.P also introduced Shaun to the work of Henry Moore, and he found aspects of similarity to his own work.

But, the most influential sculptor Shaun discovered there was Andy Goldsworthy. Andy’s balanced land art became an obsession of Shaun’s and you would often find him in the shallows of the nearby reservoirs of the Peak District, sat in the water balancing as many as 6 or 7 large rocks with just millimetres of contact points between each one.

12 years ago Shaun moved to the coast of Flamborough near Bridlington. Here he continued his land art where his playground was the beaches full of large cobbles. Shaun now also creates sculptures out of metals by welding.