Brenda AtkinsonOn show in Johannesburg
If the word “sculpture” makes you think of bronze, discreet formal objects and Platonic Ideals, and if the words “British sculpture” send you scrambling for your Jeff Koons catalogue, take a deep breath, lock your car doors, and head off to the Johannesburg Art Gallery.
A Changed World – an exhibition of contemporary British sculpture marking 40 years of British Council involvement in South Africa – is worth the trek to Joubert Park. Featuring 40 works by 35 artists, the deftly curated exhibition is a timeous and welcome contribution to what might from now on be termed the post-Johannesburg biennale art scene.
“British Sculpture” describes work influenced by British schools and the country’s sculptural lineage, essentially beginning with the break of Anthony Caro and Philip King from Henry Moore.
Caro was the first British sculptor to explore the formal possibilities of industrial steel, creating large works that broke the conventional, “totemic” association of “artwork” with base or pedestal. King’s clean, angular fibreglass assemblages similarly marked a departure from the classical materials and forms beloved of the 1940s and 1950s.
From these historical milestones, A Changed World follows a roughly chronological journey that manages to provide a sense of aesthetic continuity as well as the shock that must have accompanied certain ruptures with tradition.
Eduardo Paolozzi’s irreverent, garish metal constructions – aptly described as “promiscuous” by the Hayward’s Greg Hilty – are brilliant and fun. Anish Kapoor’s distinct sculptural forms become less so the longer you look at them. Deliciously tactile, their devouring colour pulls the viewer into the illusion of infinite space, infinite aural and visual permeability. Void (1994), in particular, is a truly beautiful sculptural experiment.
One of the strongest aspects of this exhibition is its willingness to engage with and reconsider definitions of “sculpture”. Works on the show range from “drawings” consisting of black tape stuck flat onto the gallery wall (Michael Craig-Martin), through assemblages of plastic insects (Edward Allington) to photographs (Boyd Webb, Gilbert and George), to compositions (and reflections) of found objects (Damien Hirst, Rachel Whiteread, Tim Lewis).
The inclusion of the three latter artists in the exhibition in particular challenges the increasingly fuzzy line between sculpture and installation. While so-called “conceptual” artistic practice is not a new phenomenon, it has come to mark the production of contemporary artists, and usually implies a leap away from more “traditional” forms such as painting or sculpture.
That Hirst’s I’ll love you forever – an installation of clinical waste containers and gas mask in a padlocked cage -might qualify as “sculpture” confirms the profound shift in artistic production from external, often self-sufficient “form” to an engagement with context that sees all material as invested with equal value.
Though vastly different in content and execution, Hirst and Whiteread – respectively dubbed the “devil” and “angel” of the contemporary London art world – produce work that is marked by technologies of change, memory and loss, the scarred spaces of global capital.
If you’re wondering what relevance an exhibition of British sculpture might have to South Africa at the moment, don’t. While not all the artists are represented by their most challenging works, there’s a world of layered references to diverse art historical contexts to be explored.