VARVARA KEIDAN SHAVROVA REVIEWS THE CURRENT SCULPTURE EXHIBITION AT HAYWARD GALLERY LONDON.
Currently showing at the Hayward Gallery in London until 6 May, ‘When Forms Come Alive: Sixty Years of Restless Sculpture’, presents a substantial survey exhibition, under the curatorial direction of Ralph Rugoff, and assistant Katie Guggenheim.
Presenting over 50 artworks by 21 international artists across three floors of the gallery’s brutalist interior, the exhibition features expanded sculptural works that originate in the natural world and interrogate sculpture as a methodology of transformation and change. ‘When Forms Come Alive’ addresses the instability of the modern world, in which everything changes all the time, and where nothing is safe, predictable, or static.
If you study the principle of nature, the answers are all there
– Ruth Asawa1
At first glance, this seems to be an impossible task, to represent constant flux through sculptural forms that are typically made from stable materials and that may otherwise traditionally assume the authoritative stature of ‘monuments’. Yet permanence and monumentality could not be further from the preoccupations of the artists and curators of this exhibition. Rather, their interests seem to lie in exploring sculptures that respond to abstracted ideas about nature, the Anthropocene, the post-human, and existentialist uncertainties prompted by the climate emergency and escalating militarism. Through the rigours of abstraction, various sculptural identities present themselves, letting us appreciate their materiality and purposeful human creation on the one hand, whilst simultaneously exploring the whimsical, almost accidental qualities of form and juxtaposition on the other.
I don’t make sculptures; I make beings that are alive
– Marguerite Humeau2
The curatorial approach in ‘When Forms Come Alive’ sets up a series of conversations whereby sculptures and installations with shared questions and approaches are grouped together. As a result, the exhibition flows organically, thus reinforcing the curatorial proposition that the selected sculptures draw inspiration from and reflect our relationship to the natural world.
For example, at the entrance, the viewer is confronted by two highly ambitious, yet fragile and time-based sculptural installations: Shylight (2006-14) by DRIFT and Bouquet Final (2012) by Michel Blazy. The first consists of petticoat-like forms which lower and raise, open and close like blossoming flowers in a choreographed kinetic light installation. Blazy’s artwork emanates a similar sense of ceaseless change and fragility through the constant accumulation of foam bubbles to form cloud-like waves of shivering matter that creep, glacially, from a scaffold structure, as if part of an endless production line.
Several artworks actively respond to the architectural fabric of the building itself, including its riverside location. Holly Hendry’s Slackwater (2023) is perched on a second-floor windowsill against the backdrop of the only exterior view seen from the gallery. Inspired by the abstract rhythms of the River Thames and liquid movements within the human body, the immense sculptural entanglement spreads from inside out onto the roof space, using steel ducting, foam, and marble.
Ernesto Neto’s fibre installation, Iaia Kui Dau Arã Naia (2021) is brilliantly placed above the cast concrete spiral staircase, that by contrast, accentuates its transparency, fragility, and gravitational force. Pinned to the gallery wall and spilling onto the floor, Senga Nengudi’s wonderfully whimsical compositions – R.S.V.P. Reverie (Scribe) (1977), R.S.V.P. Reverie ‘D (2014), and Water Composition I (1969-70/2019) – feature sand-filled, tension-stretched nylon tights, and vinyl structures filled with coloured water, that are both touching and humorous in their vulnerability. Reminiscent of popular culture images of nuclear disaster, Dream – Spontaneous Combustion (2008) by Olaf Brzeski is a cloud-like form in black soot, ash, and polyurethane resin that is petrified and unnerving.
It is plainly observable how matter imposes its own form upon form
– Henri Focillon3
Installation view, Franz West, ‘When Forms Come Alive’; photograph by Jo Underhill, courtesy of the Hayward Gallery
Phyllida Barlow’s untitled: girl ii (2019) presents the viewer with an arrangement of stone-like forms, reminiscent of a dolmen, a megalithic monument, or another prehistoric manmade structure. Through this powerful evocation of abstracted corporeal presence, Barlow’s sculpture thus achieves a primaeval effect; an ancient presence with tactile surfaces and curvaceous forms, seemingly imbued with timeless feminine power. One wonders whether this sculpture may always have existed since time immemorial.
Until once, in a standing circle of stones,
I felt their shadows pass
Into that dark permanence of ancient forms.
– John Montague4
By avoiding representational sculpture and its idioms of frozen life, this exhibition allows the viewer to engage with the wider and deeper concepts of decay and renewal; of change and its inevitability, indeed, its necessity. The excellent curation of the show raises a host of questions and invites visitors to reflect on possible answers.
Varvara Keidan Shavrova is a visual artist, curator, writer, and PhD candidate at the Royal College of Art. She is currently conducting her 12-month AHRC-funded research placement at the Science Museum in London. As part of her research, she is also collaborating with Rolls-Royce Aviation.
varvarashavrova.com
1 Extract from the opening speech by Ralph Rugoff, Director of Hayward Gallery and Curator of ‘When Forms Come Alive’, 6 February 2024.
2 Ralph Rugoff, When Forms Come Alive: Sixty Years of Restless Sculpture, exhibition catalogue (London: Hayward Gallery Publishing, 2024) p 9.
3 Henri Focillon, The Life of Forms in Art, trans. George Kubler (New York: Zone Books, 1992) p 19.
4 Extract from John Montague, Like Dolmens Round my Childhood, first published in Poisoned Lands and Other Poems (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1961).
