Whether they know it or not, Manchester-based readers of Northern Soul are already likely to be familiar with the work of Brian Fell. Serving as the gateway to Trafford Park, his Skyhooks – an oversized chain tethered to the ground on the approach to the one-time industrial estate, its links suggesting a beanstalk-like connection to the heavens above – works both as a visual symbol of the area’s heritage in sweated labour and as a play on the words with which new workers would be initiated into the docks and warehouses by being given the impossible task of ‘fetching a skyhook’.

It’s a representative example of Fell‘s approach to his commissioned work: imaginative, playful and rooted in the culture of the area it represents. Importantly, such attentiveness does not preclude sensitivity. His Merchant Seaman’s Memorial in Cardiff, for instance – a head cast in seemingly eternal repose – is riveted to the contours of the same kind of framework that would underpin the construction of a ship’s hull.

Both of these monumental works are referenced as part of Always Something New, a retrospective of the works of two Fells; not only Brian, but his son, George. The younger Fell began his career employed as an assistant to his father, toiling in a space whose history lends the exhibition its name. As the older Fell tells the tale, their studio lay on a route taken by one particular regular user of the in-house Gents. Admiring their work each time he answered nature’s call, he’d sing adapted lyrics to the melody of Cat Stevens’ Matthew and Son, lingering over the words, “there’s always something new”.

As their show at The Atkinson in Southport illustrates, this must indeed have been the case. It opens with an array of their figurative work – flora and fauna crafted, in the main, as portraits of the originals. For me, as a partisan admirer of the creatures that Jacques Cousteau referred to as “the soft intelligence”, it was the octopuses of Fell fils which stole the show, although every likeness on display is executed with skill. To describe them as prosaic would be to do such wonderfully wrought pieces a disservice. Indeed, a video running alongside the sculptures succinctly documents the range of skills – in cutting, shaping, welding and grinding – whose mastery is required to bring them to life. Nonetheless, the commissioned pieces, as characterful as many of them are, do not possess quite the same degree of poetry and musicality that Fell père articulates in his more personal works.

He describes his collages, crafted with knife and paper, as “constructed drawings”, and there’s a real vibrancy in their jazzy abstractions, as though capturing syncopation and improvisation in their full flow. Similar principles are at play in his non-figurative metal assemblages. Perhaps befitting an artist who completed a fellowship in a Sheffield steelworks, the more substantial sculptures, such as Ajax Bow, have something of a constructivist feel. If that feels like a hefty comparison, then its smaller companions are lighter in both weight and tone. The conversational heads of King and Queen, for instance, have the form of Czech animation and the charm of a children’s book illustration. Sunset, on the other hand, radiates spokes of red light, like joy.

It’s these pieces, paradoxically, that, while not imitating life, appear to brim over with it. Lungless, they seem nevertheless inspired. Fixed to the floor, and hung on the walls, they somehow seem more than stationary, as though imbued by the spirit of their creator. To misquote Cat Stevens myself, while it might be said of Fell and son that “their work’s never done”, nor should their play be curtailed, just so long as it enables such flights of fancy.

By Desmond Bullen, Chief Arts Correspondent

Main image: Always Something New, Brian & George Fell, 2026. Photo by Dave Jones.

          

Always Something New by Brian & George Fell is at The Atkinson, Southport until October 17, 2026. For more information, click here.