Yesterday I heard The Very Revd. Nicholas Bury, former Dean of Gloucester Cathedral, speak at an event organised by Art & Christianity Enquiry about the Cathedral’s engagement with the visual arts including Crucible, the successful sculpture exhibition organised together with Gallery Pangolin and held in the autumn of last year.
Crucible showed over 75 works from 48 artists - a who’s who of contemporary British sculpture - from the "New Bronze Age" sculptors of the 1950s to current household names like Damien Hirst and Antony Gormley. The curator of the exhibition and director of Gallery Pangolin, Rungwe Kingdon, argued that: "Such enormous diversity, such a range of expression, powerfully illustrates the vitality and vibrancy of the sculpture scene." Pangolin Editions was founded in 1985 by Kingdon and Claude Koenig and by working with some of the foremost artists of the late 20th and 21st century, their foundry has grown into the largest sculpture foundry in Britain. Every sculptor they approached responded positively, a testament to the strength of the relationships they have formed. Therefore, most of the works included in Crucible were made in Gloucestershire, by the talented craftsmen working at Pangolin Editions foundry in the Stroud valleys, or by artists from Gloucester Cathedral.
Kingdon aimed to "choose objects that demanded attention, questioned convention and stimulated ideas" believing that sculpture "articulates images and ideas in a primarily emotional way, responses that are felt as much as seen." The sheer diversity of the seventy-eight pieces could be seen both in "their varied form, texture and colour" but also in the emotional responses made to them; "many confound, others delight, some may make us laugh and others even induce melancholy." Late twentieth and early twenty-first century sculpture, Kingdon suggests, "is famously irreverent, bawdy and questioning," but he also believes that the exhibition clearly articulated its "fascination with belief, faith and the potent ideas religion addresses: life, death, pain, pleasure, denial, excess, our interdependence and individuality; the opposites that question the ‘how?’ and ‘why?’ of our existence."
He concluded: "We wanted to find contemporary sculptures that would complement the magnificent setting of Gloucester Cathedral, which is a great work of art in itself ... The result is a tremendous endorsement of the sculptural richness of our age and a fitting tribute to the medieval period, justifiably known as the ‘great age of sculpture’ in British history."
Like Crucible, the Modern British Sculpture exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, which I saw today, is primarily relationally based, in this case showing how, for over 100 years, London and its museums have had a powerful appeal for sculptors, and how the Royal Academy itself has played a significant and controversial role in shaping modern British sculpture. To highlight the extent of the Royal Academy’s influence, the exhibition features sculptures by three of its former presidents – Frederic Leighton, Charles Wheeler and Phillip King.
However, unlike Crucible, which focused on the emotive nature of sculpture’s engagement with ultimate themes, the RA’s survey is chronological and focuses on the dialogue that British Sculpture has had within a broader international context, highlighting the ways in which Britain’s links with its Empire, continental Europe and the United States have helped shape an art that at its best is truly international in scope and significance. A series of visual juxtapositions are intended to challenge the viewer to make new connections and break the mould of old conceptions. So, for example, a series of significant loans from the British Museum and the V&A are shown alongside modern British sculptures from the period 1910-1930 to highlight the inquisitiveness of British artists when the Empire was at its peak and London was, almost literally, the centre of the world. The visitor is invited to make comparisons between these pieces and consider the dramatic effect that non-western techniques, iconography and cultural sensibility had on the development of British sculpture at the beginning of the twentieth century.
The extent to which both exhibitions have been formed through the relationships that each institution has fostered means that neither exhibition can be definitive in their treatment of the subject. The argument underpinning the selection and display of work in the RA’s show means that the works are viewed within a narrative of dialogue while at Crucible the works themselves were in dialogue with the architecture, functions and meaning of the building.
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Bruce Cockburn - Pacing The Cage.
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