Kenneth Topp was born  in an old farmhouse set high up amongst trees and windswept gardens overlooking the north sea in Kincardineshire, Scotland. 

Growing up  on this dramatic coastline  of cliffs  caves and headlands , formed by the great geologic fault  dividing  highlands from  lowlands proved formative to his developopment and instilled in him a great love and understanding of geology and natural history.

At a very early age an interest in architecture and gardens developed, though once attending  Edinburgh College of Art he eventually specialised in sculpture. He won the Royal Scottish Academy student sculpture award and the Royal Society of Arts design bursary.

In Scotland during the 1980's there was a great revival of figurative painting, especially from Glasgow and Topp was also working at this time from life and drawing from landscape. He exhibited his work  at Edinburgh's 369 Gallery, the Scottish Gallery  and with the Scottish Art Councils touring shows. He was at the point making drawings and sculptures that reduced human forms to a fundamental geometry and began making site specific work.

Topp moved to london and studied at Chelsea College of Art where he did an MA in Theory and Practice of Public Art. He exhibited a piece at the ICA. and collaborated with architects.

In 1988 he moved to New York. Being sponsored by architects Steven Harris and Associates.

Here he made a series of erotic furniture pieces and exhibited at Frumpkin Addams Gallery.

Moving back to london in 1992 he continued to collaborate with architects, art consultants and garden designers on private projects rarely showing his work within a gallery context.  He rediscovered his interest in gardens, designing a number of private gardens in london mainly for collectors, art dealers  and others involved in the arts.

selected site specific commissioned work 

Aberdeen City Council

Richard and Karen Wright , Cambridge

Charles and Rosamund Brown, Wiltshire

Jane Hamlyn, Gloucestershire

The late Sir Paul Getty

Granada Hotel Group

selected garden commissions

Charles and Leonie Booth Clibborn, London

Jane Hamlyn and James Lingwood, London

Nick and Bella Michaealides, London

Benches in a garden, Cambride, England.

I had been playing with the idea of sculpture that had a relationship to space outside the gallery. Specifically with the concept of furniture which went beyond its usual primary function.  Nigel Greenwood, the art dealer, introduced me to Richard and Karen Wright,  collectors, who  had been looking to commission site specific work. They wanted to create a destination in a garden and proposed a seating area for conversation and eating out. I had previously made a number of works  which had tongue forms , often in pairs. and drew from these. In this sculpture there is a suggestion of tongues meeting ,

Door , New York

I had collaborated with an architect on a competition to re -design the Parc du Bercy in Paris and had made some drawings for  entrances.   Around this time I moved to new york and was  still thinking about different kinds of entrances  and exits so i made this door . It was made to the exact dimensions  of the lavatory door in the New York apartment. It has these holes every so often that telescope out and in ,and a pierced drop -shaped handle. voyeurist and sexual  elements. but i was also at this point missing my seaside home. I tried to imagine a house below the waves and what kind of doors it would have in order to relent against a weight of water. I came across a drawing by de Chirico of a man rowing in a pond with furniture floating around and this in some way may have influenced me.

Cock box

New York is the best known  'phallic city' and many of the older buildings seem to telescope upwards , with a series of terrace  'set backs'  I was living in one yet thinking about my rocks back home. There is one particular rock called 'red man' that stands out of the sea like a fin two or three metres high and as a red stone can be seen at quite some distance. I wanted to celebrate that  precious rock and one way I thought would be to make a box for it. its a kind of cod piece.

Table in a scent garden , Wiltshire, England

I had made some aerodynamic finned and winged sculptures and took some time off to watch whales  from a boat in Alaska. I became mesmerised by the whale 'breaching', that is when it lifts out of the sea to plunge back in, the tail momentarily left standing before slipping under.  drawing from this experience I made a squashed cone shape which balanced on a point. In London Nigel Greenwood introduced me to Charles and Rosamund Brown, collectors commissioning site specific work for a country garden being designed by Pascal Caribier. Some way from the house there is a very large carp pond surrounded by a scent garden,  they wanted  a destination, where people could meet to drink and eat. I reworked the original balancing the flattened cone onto a tongue.

Mica collage

I  grew up on a rocky stretch of scottish coastline very rich in geologic formations and spent a great deal of time exploring these. I had always been aware of mica, a naturally occuring rock crystal that delaminates to resemble a silvery transparant acetate. In these mica panels i am playing with rocks and water. I had been reading Simon Schama's 'landscape and memory' and studying artists who had used rocks either to create  a stylised landscape as in China and Japan or European painters who depicted rocky landscapes as backgrounds to figure compositions. Many of these landscapes are charged with sexualised imagery though usually never explicit. Through complex photo techniques I have been printing on industrially produced mica panels figure compositions of men engaged  sexually with each other. The love panels were linked to this but i made them during the Iraq war, its what all those soldiers should have been doing.