Sculptor. Born to English parents in Toronto, he worked to begin with in advertising, but decided in 1956 to become a sculptor, his preferred material being welded steel. In 1957 the Toronto Gallery showed his work and bought one piece. In 1961, with a Canadian Council grant, he came to England, studying at the Royal College of Art and staging an exhibition at the Molton Gallery (1962). He had further exhibitions at the Hamilton Galleries in London, and the Graham Gallery in New York in 1964. Loughborough University acquired Gladstone’s Venus Probe II, which was shown at the Whitechapel Gallery (1967-8). His sculpture, Universal Man, of 1976, was originally sited near the CN Tower in Toronto. In 1994, it was removed to the Yorkdale Shopping Centre, much to his annoyance. In 2000, his millennium sculpture, Flight, was unveiled in his hometown of Beaverton (Ontario).
Bibliography: D. Buckman, Artists in Britain since 1945 (2 vols: A–L, M–Z), Bristol, 2006; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Leicestershire and Rutland, Liverpool, 2000, pp. 207, 335, 368–69; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of Historic Westminster. Volume 1, Liverpool, 2011, pp. 122, 449.
Philip Ward-Jackson, 2011
