Stepping back to look at the sculpture

Associated media

Rosalind Ormiston enjoys an engaging account of the last century's worth of sculpture

Thinking Is Making: Presence and Absence in Contemporary Sculpture Edited by Michael Taylor

Going against the grain of Ad Reinhart’s view of sculpture as ‘something you bump into when you back up to look at a painting’, Thinking is Making marks ten years of the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award, a prize that recognizes the talent of emerging sculptors.  The book explores the changing nature of sculpture through the presence and absence of the object, taking the reader from Marcel Duchamp’s ‘assisted readymade’, c.1913, to 21st-century sculptors working 100 years on,  such as prize-winners Rosie Leventon and Giles Kent, Jemima Brown and John Summers.

Essay contributions by Martin Herbert, Matilda Strang and Fiona McDonald identify the remarkable revolutions in the creation of sculpture, where absence of the finite object can be as much a part of the sculpture as its physical presence. Herbert opens the discussion with ‘The broken arm’, on making, unmaking and remaking sculpture. He cites Marcel Duchamp, who in 1913 debated the possibility of making ‘works which are not works of “art” ’. A Duchamp fan will know the ‘assisted readymade’ Bicycle Wheel, 1913, a rotatable bicycle wheel screwed to a kitchen stool; and the shop-bought snow shovel, to which Duchamp added the title ‘In Advance of the Broken Arm (from) Marcel Duchamp, 1915 to create his artwork. Herbert follows on with a fascinating capsule history of sculptural practice through the last century.

Matilda Strang writes on the legacy of St Martins Sculpture Department, in ‘The proof is in the pudding’. She begins with a funny story about John Latham, working as a part-time tutor at St Martin’s in 1966. With students’ help he created the sculpture Chew and Spit: Art and Culture, 1966. Borrowing Clement Greenberg’s book Art and Culture, 1961, from the school library – the choice of book was intentional – he ripped out pages and chewed them into a pulp. The masticated pieces of text on modern art were placed in a jar and sealed. He returned the book in its new form. For this he was sacked. (This artwork was bought by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1969).

Strang uses the event to illustrate how wide the gap was between art school teaching and artists’ practice in the 1960s. Strang shows how from the 1950s-early 1970s the Sculpture Department at St Martins moved away from tradition to construct ‘a new and radical arena for art’, a period when Richard Long, Barry Flanagan and Richard Deacon were students. Long is noted for leaving the studio space to create walking-as-art, such as A Line Made by Walking, 1967. The development of the department came from its radical tutors, and led to unusual experiments in the creation of art works; such as ‘The Locked Room’ method employed in 1969, whereby first year students were locked in a room for eight hours with art materials and tools, in order to create ‘intense experiences to free the mind of normal thought’. Strang’s informative essay goes on to discuss the development of St Martins Sculpture Department after this intense period, and its place today.

Fiona McDonald, perhaps saving the best until last, reviews the past ten winners of the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award from 2002 to 2011. The award was initiated by Standpoint, an independent artist-run project and studio space charity organization based in Hoxton, London, established in 1986. The prize seeks to award emerging artists, to encourage their development in art-based production. The winners of the prize since 2002 are Rosie Leventon, Giles Kent, and Victoria Rance; Kevin Osmond, John Summers and Clara Clark; Paul Carter, John Wallbank and Jemima Brown. The book devotes over three-quarters of its pages to illustrating their works, a stunning demonstration of how pictures convey even more than the written word. McDonald’s text is a considered discussion of the power that sculpture has to change perception and alter established practice. She reveals the essence of the artists’ early inspirations and follows the progression of their art practice to the present time. The book is a valuable contribution to understanding the practice of emerging sculptors, with the opportunity to study closely the prize-winning works.

Thinking Is Making: Presence and Absence in Contemporary Sculpture, edited by Michael Taylor  is published by Black Dog Publishing, London, 2013. 192 pp. 260 mono and colour illus, hardback. ISBN 978 1 908966 04 9