‘Roy Noakes dedicated his life to evolving an alternative sculptural language, one concerned with transience and lightness, to conveying fleeting appearances and gestures with the greatest economy of means, pared down, that is, in the sense of needing to eliminate everything that was extraneous to the inner energy of his forms. He worked, in short, outside all of the mainstream or avant-garde cultural orthodoxies of his time, neither a Brutalist, a conceptualist, nor involved with smooth or shiny surfaces that were barriers to expressing the dynamic potential of his materials.’
Martin Harrison
Roy Noakes
1936-2002
A Language Beyond Words
Roy Noakes never wrote about his work, although he was known to parry queries about his aims with quotes from artists he admired, offering clues to his thinking:
‘Sculpture is not an outside sport’
Edgar Degas
‘The language of sculpture is dead’
Arturo Martini
He did, however, scribe on the wall of his Cambridge studio:
‘I am working on a language that is a language of its own: it doesn’t translate into words’.
Early Life and Apprenticeship
Roy was born in 1936 in the Peabody Buildings, Stepney, East London, the youngest of five children. His father, who painted white lines along Commercial Road and, by Roy’s account, made a ‘great copy’ of the Laughing Cavalier, encouraged him to draw and paint.
At fifteen, Roy was apprenticed to the monumental masons Anselm Odlings, where he learned to use a pointing machine and, crucially, to free carve under Italian master carvers.
He later transferred to Gerald Giudici, working on public monuments and architectural reliefs designed by leading sculptors including Sir Charles Wheeler, Gilbert Ledward, James Woodford and David McFall. During this time he formed a lifelong friendship with James Butler, who encouraged him to attend drawing classes.
Training and Influences
After National Service and with support from the Goldsmiths Company, Roy studied at the City and Guilds Institute. There, Bernard Sindall introduced him to both Classical and Renaissance sculpture, as well as contemporary European artists such as Giacomo Manzù, Arturo Martini and Medardo Rosso.
A Beckwith Scholarship from the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers enabled him to travel to Italy. This experience, alongside the 1964 Manzù exhibition at Tate Britain and the Pompeii figures revealed by Giuseppe Fiorelli and Amedeo Maiuri, accelerated his development as a figurative sculptor.
Developing a Figurative Language
As a student, Roy produced a series of imagined freestanding figures in clay. Rather than following strict anatomical accuracy, he used the freedom of modelling to create elongated, undulating forms that conveyed movement and emotion.
A Shifting Artistic Landscape
In post-war Britain, sculpture moved away from large Victorian and Edwardian workshops. The rise of art schools and galleries encouraged artists to pursue personal and conceptual approaches, shaping Roy’s direction.
Great Sampford: Expansion and Experimentation
Roy moved to Great Sampford in north-east Essex, where he built a studio and began a more experimental body of work. While still rooted in the human form, his sculptures grew in scale and simplicity, using stone, resin and fibreglass.
His focus shifted towards the relationship between overall form and internal structure, exploring how a sculpture is experienced from multiple viewpoints.
Creative Exchanges and Portraits
Though he worked alone, conversations with composer Alan Rawsthorne, painter Isabel Rawsthorne and writer Jack Lindsay—often in the Black Bull—helped shape his thinking.
He made portraits of each of them.
Cambridge: Constraint and Clarity
In the early 1970s, Roy moved to Cambridge, working in a confined ground-floor space. The limitations of light and scale led him to abandon large armatures and rethink his process.
Working more directly, he built and reduced form in clay with a carver’s approach. This shift brought greater immediacy and clarity to his work, and his ideas about sculpture became more defined.
Influence of Medardo Rosso
This approach echoes Medardo Rosso’s belief in the unity of artistic disciplines. In 1896 he wrote:
‘Painting? Sculpture? there is only one art, identical and indivisible at all times… within every great painter there lies a great sculptor.’
Yorkshire: Landscape and Light
In the early 1980s, Roy moved to Pateley Bridge, North Yorkshire. Walking in the landscape, he observed how light alters perception of form, reinforcing his interest in how static objects can appear to shift through changing conditions.
Relief Work and Light
Returning to low relief, he explored the effects of natural and artificial light in a final series of works depicting swimmers and interiors.
Process and Drawing
Roy made few preparatory drawings. Instead, drawing often followed the sculpture, resulting in a direct, spontaneous quality.
Portraiture
Throughout his career, Roy created portraits—both commissioned and personal—of family, friends and contemporaries.