Alastair Gibson, a South African artist and the creative force behind Carbon Art 45, has carved out a distinctive place in the contemporary art world by merging advanced engineering with expressive sculpture. Working with solid carbon fibre and repurposed Formula 1 components, Gibson brings together technical ingenuity and aesthetic vision in works that feel both mechanical and alive.

With a background in Formula 1 engineering, Gibson’s eye for materials has shaped a unique art form with high-profile commissions, from the 2024 British Grand Prix trophies to Balenciaga, who enlisted him to craft a bespoke carbon fibre hat for its couture runway.

“When I worked in Formula One, I was bombarded by all these beautiful parts,” Gibson recalls. “I remember working at Benetton and walking into the stores, there was this massive box of beautiful titanium bits. I asked the storeman what was happening with these and he told me they were just getting chucked — so I took a handful. Later I thought, this would be ideal to make a sculpture and embellish them with all these little pieces.”

That connection between machine and nature runs through much of Gibson’s work. At The Drang Art Gallery in Salcombe this summer, highlights included his Supermarine Spitfire sculpture — supporting the National Spitfire Project — and the debut of a striking new carbon fibre Stingray.

The Spitfire collaboration is particularly poignant. The National Spitfire Project is raising funds for a national monument in Southampton honouring the aircraft and the many people who designed, flew and maintained it across more than 30 Allied nations. “We were approached to make 100 speed-form Spitfires,” Gibson explains. “Reginald Mitchell, the designer of the Spitfire, struggled to make rigid wooden models to run in wind tunnels. If he were alive today, I’m sure he would have used carbon fibre — very rigid, very light, and perfect for the aerodynamic package. That’s the ethos we tried to copy.”

Equally central to Gibson’s philosophy is symmetry, a principle that guides both his engineering past and sculptural present. “I try and get it right in my head that this thing belongs in a wind tunnel and what’s on the left has got to be on the right. That’s why all my sculptures are perfectly symmetrical.”

“One thing that makes me a sculptor, from being an engineer, is I can see something in one dimension — like a picture — and sculpt it by hand in three dimensions. I don’t like to just bolt parts together and call it a sculpture. I want to get as close as I can to the natural form.”

Looking ahead, in collaboration with the Blue Planet, Gibson is creating an installation featuring two mackerel — one pristine, the other choked by strands of plastic — to highlight the crisis of ocean pollution. “It’s blunt, but I hope children will ask, ‘What’s wrong with that one?’ And the answer is simple: because we throw plastic in the ocean.”

Alastair Gibson’s work stands apart because it fuses two worlds rarely seen together: the precision of high-performance engineering and the poetry of sculpture. Rooted in symmetry, craftsmanship and material innovation, his pieces are technically flawless yet deeply evocative, capturing the essence of both machine and nature. In an art world often dominated by the familiar, Gibson offers something fresh, exquisite and undeniably original.