Like so many of us in the Club, R9 member Jonny Ambrose’s passion for cars began at an early age. Fascinated by the shapes and liveries of Formula 1 cars in the 1970s, he first put pen to paper as a schoolboy and never really stopped. A degree in Fine Art at Nottingham University in the early 1990s would see Ambrose present six-foot-tall automotive-inspired sculptures for his final show, innovative abstract objects that would soon find a home in the nearby Donington Grand Prix Collection.
Artistic endeavours took a back seat when Ambrose began working in video game production in 1998, starting his own business in the industry four years later that he would run until 2016. Since then, he has been pursuing his original ambition as a full-time automotive artist, creating a variety of fascinating mixed media sculptures and wall hangings, most of which have a distinctly Porsche flavour.
His studio, hidden away down a farm track in a quiet corner of the Midlands, is replete with highly original creations that recall familiar shapes from Porsche’s racing past, be that exaggerated details of Le Mans-inspired long tail bodywork or monochrome 3D reliefs of 917s and 911s. Shelves are filled with miniature 3D-printed models – interpretations of iconic Porsche forms – while more substantial sculptures of 904s and Mary Stuart RSRs vie for bench space with a work-in-progress 935 assembled from multiple layers of laser-cut resin and carbon fibre.
Ambrose began his artistic journey with more abstract forms that had a suggestion of the automotive, but has lately become more focussed on his current design language which is one of both celebration and personal expression, exploring the forms created by designers and engineers and amplifying them.
“In recent years, I’ve gone towards making things that are clearly car-oriented forms,” he says, “albeit elongated and more streamlined, playing with ideas around aerodynamics and airflow around and through a car. I’ve tried to not just do traditional sculpture, sitting on a plinth or a table, and varied it by doing reliefs. A lot of my work allows the light to come through while the reliefs play with shadows. My work is quite varied, but it all comes back to the materials.”
These tend towards either the traditional or the ultra-modern, with hard woods juxtaposed with plastics and carbon fibre, often offset by a dash of a tertiary element such as anodised aluminium. He has also begun to work with 3D printing, drawing complex forms using CAD software and having both single elements and entire pieces formed in solid man-made materials.
“Modern technology is great,” he says, “but it needs to be used in the right way. I think of computer software as just another tool and it’s still the ideas that are the most important aspect. If used correctly, 3D printing allows you to create things that can’t be created any other way. But keeping the older traditions alive is also important to me. Steam-bending wood allows me to preserve the flow of the grain and that can’t be achieved by cutting or milling.”
Ambrose describes his work as being inspired by some of the ideas and forms of the 1930s, where streamliners and land speed record cars presented outrageous but elegant shapes that were hitherto unimaginable. But he is equally enthused by the designs that he grew up around, such as the racers of the 1970s and 1980s with which Porsche established itself on the world stage.
“A lot of the car forms that we see today are constrained by regulations,” Ambrose explains. “The headlights have to be a certain height, for example – the boring stuff – and I prefer to think of things in their pure form, as the designer would have imagined them from that initial sketch, and really maximise the aesthetic appeal.”
The results are compelling, as Ambrose takes an immediately familiar shape to most Porsche fans and makes its trademark design elements even more pronounced, injecting an almost tangible sense of speed into the static. Alongside his framed reliefs and free-standing sculptures, lockdown also saw him produce a series of 3D-printed 917s from the early longtails to the turbocharged Can-Am cars, all of which feature the same surreal stretched form that almost emulates motion blur.
His latest work has taken this idea a step further, with a half-size model of the 917 Kurzheck built from narrow gauge aluminium and carbon fibre tubing. The aluminium section is a near-exact replica of the car’s original chassis design, while the carbon elements make up the body form and wheels. It is comprised of around 2,000 individual components, joined together by highly complex 3D-printed connectors that Ambrose painstakingly designed in CAD over a period of two solid months prior to a three-week build.
“It’s like one huge jigsaw puzzle,” he says, “and it gives the visual impression of being a maze of lines and shadows. When you move around the work, its composition changes, and, in the right light, it throws out even more lines, so there’s always something to explore.”
It is a remarkable thing to behold, at once instantly recognisable as a 917 but at the same time upending your subconscious assumptions, its low, stretched form and flattened, hexagonal wheels breathing real speed and drama into its skeletal structure.
What is evident from everything in Ambrose’s workshop is that he is truly immersed in the world of cars and Porsche, something that resonates in all his work and that evidently speaks to his wide international clientele. In a garage behind his workshop sits his own car, a 914 that he is slowly improving and gently customising when time allows, injecting accents of colour and modern materials to the cabin while celebrating and preserving its incredible exterior patina. Once again, the past and present in creative collaboration. Porsche in a nutshell.
Find out more at jonnyambrose.com and follow Jonny on Instagram using @jonnyambrose.autoart.