Horse of Spoons by Barry Lewis

The latest artist on my radar is Barry Lewis, a Welshman who trained as an engineer, worked as a carpenter, became an ice sculptor and finally put his passion for South Wales’ Rhondda Valley together with an eye for aesthetics to create his own, uniquely eco-friendly kind of art.

The result is an exhibition called Monster, which begins tomorrow at Bristol’s Grant Bradley Gallery. He describes his work as a means of letting “nature get its own back”, and meanders through the countryside, reclaiming parts of the rusting cars and bikes dumped in rivers and on mountainsides and transforming them into wonderfully peculiar beasties.

“Someone might chuck dump a bike on the hillside, then I’ll bring it home to pull apart and turn into a sculpture of some weird animal, making it into art and clearing up the countryside in the process. I use all kinds of things - some of my sculptures might include six types of metal, from a bit of stainless steel cutlery to an old petrol tank from a motorbike. A bit of metal might resemble a nose and the animal grows from there.”

The curious creatures range from immense scorpions to alligators – one of my favourites is a horse made entirely from junk-shop cutlery. There are also dragonflies with tea-strainers for eyes and a dragon made from an old car seat with fence-posts for teeth. The scale of some of them is immense – a true zoo of the bizarre.

Around forty of the recycled beasts are taking residence in the Grant Bradley Gallery for Barry’s Monsters exhibition. I can’t wait to see more of them for myself at the open preview tomorrow, and maybe even take a small one home, though my landlord might protest – there’s a no pets clause in our contract.