Garth Evans Sculpture: Beneath the Skin

Garth Evans is a sculptor as capable of evoking

Project Director of the digital research project

intimacy and simplicity as he is of dealing with

Garth Evans Sculpture Beneath the Skin

Ann Compton (ed.) is the originator and Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851–1951 (sculpture. gla.ac.uk). She has written widely on British painting and sculpture, particularly of the twentieth century, and her publications include The Sculpture of Charles Sargeant Jagger (2004). She is an Honorary Fellow in the School of Culture and Creative Arts, University of Glasgow and a Visiting Scholar at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Prior to moving into research, Compton worked as a curator at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, the Imperial War Museum, London, and University of Liverpool.

the monumental and the timeless. This complete survey of his unique career is long overdue, and reveals a wealth of innovative and powerful work, much of it previously unseen in print. As narratives

Garth Evans Sculpture

of British sculpture are reconsidered, Evans is

Beneath the Skin

and Philip King with that of Tony Cragg, Richard

emerging as one of the most creative and influential artists to bridge the generation of Antony Caro Deacon, Antony Gormley, Alison Wilding and Bill Woodrow. This investigation into Evans’s hugely varied, visually eventful and challenging practice explores connections across geographies and timeframes as well as contextualizing major changes and new departures in his work.

Garth Evans was born in Manchester in 1934 and settled in the USA at the midpoint of his career.

He has exhibited widely in Europe and America since the early 1960s, and his work is represented in major public and private collections in Australia, Brazil, Portugal, the USA and the UK (including the Arts Council Collection, Leeds City Art Galleries,The British Museum, the V&A and Tate).

Edited by Ann Compton

Philip Wilson Publishers an imprint of I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd 6 Salem Road London W2 4BU www.philip-wilson.co.uk

02_Garth_Evans_Front_Cover_FINAL_V.5.indd 1

ISBN 978-1-78130-004-6

9 781781 300046

Evans has been the recipient of numerous awards as well as holding a number of distinguished teaching positions. Since 1988, he has taught at the Studio School in New York City where he is Head of Sculpture.

Front cover: Untitled No. 1, 1974. Photograph by Anna Arca, courtesy Arts Council Collection Back cover: Little Dancer No. 84, 2003–8 Inside covers: Four Bodies, installed at Lori Bookstein Gallery, New York, 2006. Photograph by Jerry L. Thompson

18/12/2012 19:04

Garth Evans Sculpture Beneath the Skin

© the authors 2013 Published by Philip Wilson Publishers an imprint of I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd 6 Salem Road London W2 4BU www.philip-wilson.co.uk

Contents

ISBN 978-1-78130-004-6 Distributed in the United States and Canada exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010

Designed by Pippa Kate Bridle

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Preface and Acknowledgements

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior permission of the publishers.

Author Biographies

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Penelope Curtis Introduction

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Printed and bound in China by Everbest This book was published to coincide with Garth Evans, an Arts Council Collection exhibition curated by Richard Deacon, Longside Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 22 March – 28 April 2013

Jon Wood The Sculpture of Garth Evans: Jon Wood in conversation with the artist Richard Deacon

Localized changes of condition

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David Hulks Breakdown: analysis of a crisis in the work of Garth Evans 52 Rhona Warwick Closing the Gap: Garth Evans and the interstitial spaces between decision and execution 70 Anna Lovatt The Migration of Meaning: Garth Evans’ Sculpture of the 1980s 86 Michael Brenson Dramas of Desire and Disorder: the Yaddo Drawings of Garth Evans 126 Leila Philip Geography of the Imagination: biography of a studio 142 Ann Compton In the beginning... 168 Notes 174 Garth Evans Archival texts 178 Caption note: All the works are in the artist's collection unless otherwise stated. Metric dimensions (height x width x depth) are given first, followed by measurements in inches (or a few instances in feet).

Chronology 209

Bibliography 213

Exhibitions 217

Localized changes of condition Richard Deacon

It was a catastrophe which gave a wrong direction to all medieval thought and threw it out of its course when, owing to the Renaissance, thought, which till then had been an end in itself, was degraded to a mere means to an end, namely, the knowledge of external scientific truth, when the purpose of knowledge became everything and the process of knowledge nothing. Thought then lost its abstract autonomy and became a servant: it became the slave of truth ... In short, it was condemned to be a mere intellectual copy of the true, that is to say, of objective facts – like the line in painting, which also had once lived by its own particular expression alone, and now, in the same circumstances, also lost its arabesque existence to become a limiting outline, a reproduction of the world of natural forms, a mere handmaid of the objective...

– Wilhelm Worringer, Form in Gothic3

I first met, or at least saw, Garth Evans on 22 September 1969. Garth was one of a quartet of lecturers at St. Martin’s School of Art (the others being Peter Kardia, Peter Harvey and Gareth Jones) who had drawn up a radical new course for the first year sculpture school intake. Garth was there that morning, along with Gareth Jones, to induct us, the selected group of first years into that course. There was an air of some curiosity and expectancy. On arrival at Detail: Untitled No. 38, 1967–68, fiberglass, pigment, 182.8 x 61 x 61 (each element 72 x 24 x 24)

St. Martin’s, the incoming sculpture students had been directed to the A2 studio. One end of this large and, at that

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Garth Evans Sculpture – Beneath the Skin

Localized changes of condition

time empty, studio was closed off by a barrier of wooden

I took my cube, placed it by the card containing my name

occasionally seemed, either vulnerable or insecure and thus

screens. On the left-hand side of this screen wall was a

and sat down on it.

a potential target. (In an effort to construct an explanation

padlocked door with a notice pinned to it saying ‘PROJECT

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for what was happening our participation was sometimes

AREA. KNOCK BEFORE ENTERING.’ Sculpture students

It was not stated, but the material provided changed sporad-

an attempt to undermine.) Garth remained inscrutable, but

from all three years of the diploma course assembled in the

ically – evidence of the previous encounter being removed

clearly attentive and engaged – as the suppressed passion of

room, those returning talking, those new sitting or standing,

and, presumably, destroyed. The supplied materials were:

his opening remarks had revealed. It was a complex position

mostly silent. At about 10.15 two men came into the studio

which nevertheless commanded respect.

both wearing name badges – Garth Evans and Gareth Jones.

Polystyrene (and brown paper)

The first year students were asked to return at 11.20.

Kraft paper

Looking back I see in Garth a natural observer – open

String

and curious, slow to form judgements. Over time, in other

At the appointed time we gathered in the studio. Garth

Plaster and water

contexts, it became clear that a part of his teaching method

Evans and Gareth Jones reappeared. Gareth held a

Stopwatch

lay in his being able to observe and to make deductions from

small box of name badges. He picked these out one at a

The Manydeed Group (Richard Deacon, top left, and Garth Evans, middle row right), 1972 Next spread: Babar, 1965, fiberglass, pigment, 81.3 x 584.2 x 43.2 (32 x 230 x 17), Paul Minyo, Courtesy of Poussin Gallery, London

those observations. In his studio practice I think that Garth

We became an awkward and demanding year group.

time, reading the written name aloud and giving it to the

This first project lasted twenty-four days. Further projects,

accepts that the activity of art making is rule bound as a

During our third year we began meeting regularly to discuss

responding student. All having received badges, Garth read

with variations in the rules, were introduced throughout

state of things rather than the consequences of authority.

collective actions and to think about how we might continue

an introduction to the project from a piece of paper that he

the year. The project area was only used during the

In other words he embraces such constraints as the

to be together after graduation. This loose discussion

held in his hand. In this statement he emphasized that the

project periods, outside of those times it was locked and

number, type and size of modules in a work, the demands

group slowly formalized into a limited company called The

project would be demanding and require self discipline on

inaccessible. During the projects at least one of the four

and limitations of materials (only this or only that) as well as

Manydeed Group, with the objectives of being a mechanism

the part of the students to make it successful. His hands

members of staff was always present. No one ever told

the starting conditions of the genre and discipline (such as

to provide mutual support and a public face or umbrella for

shook as he read. The door to the project area was then

us what to do, but, more importantly no one ever told us

wall relief, three-dimensional figure, portrait). Garth equally

our activities. Peter Harvey, Gareth Jones, Peter Kardia and

unlocked, Garth and Gareth entered followed, one at a

what not to do and we were never ignored or not attended

strongly rejects external voices dictating concept, image or

Garth Evans, who had now become known as ‘Group A’

time, by the students. As each entered they were handed,

to. In retrospect, I realize that it is relatively easy to teach

process (this or that form, this or that technique etc.). In

staff, had resumed their tutorial contacts and initiated some

from piles either side of the door, a cube of 20 inches on

people what to do but it is enormously difficult to place

the intense teaching situation of that first year course at

further projects with us during that final year. Although

the side wrapped in brown paper. The project area was

someone in a position where they can learn what not to do

St. Martin’s Garth’s clear acceptance of the rules of the role

we knew they were aware of our regular meetings, it was

bare of furniture save for notices pinned at various points to

for themselves rather than through a prescribed process.

he had been instrumental in building and his wide-eyed

nevertheless unexpected when The Manydeed Group

the walls and saying ‘No drawing or writing materials to be

However, if this can be achieved the benefit is the great gift

curiosity about where that would take him, and us, were,

received a formal application from all four ‘Group A’ staff

used’; ‘Punctuality is essential’; ‘No verbal communication

of ‘what to do’ becoming an arena of endless possibility.

perhaps, what we understood. Neither an authoritarian

to join. Given the sustained and formative intensity of our

imposition nor a misunderstood friendship, but just how

contacts, it’s perhaps not so surprising, some might say a

it was in that situation at that time.

variant of the Stockholm Syndrome was in play. In any case

between students’; ‘Verbal communication is allowed between individual student and member of staff’; ‘The

Throughout the ‘A Course’ (as it has become known) Garth

project area will be open 10.00 – 11.00, 11.20 – 1.00, 2.00 –

was hard to read. He never frightened or overawed us as Peter

3.00, 3.20 – 4.30’. Pieces of card pinned at various points to

Kardia’s intense and commanding presence sometimes

The rigours of that first year course produced, quite

an appropriate development so, after some discussion, the

the floor each contained the name of an individual student.

could nor did he appear, as Gareth Jones and Peter Harvey

naturally, a strong sense of solidarity amongst us students.

four were welcomed into the group.

there were undoubtedly strong connections and it seemed

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Garth Evans Sculpture – Beneath the Skin

Localized changes of condition

Post St. Martin’s, The Manydeed Group met weekly

by Cézanne or Giacometti as it is of Mbuti bark cloth images

and, apart from complex and arcane issues of our own

from Zaire, Yuan dynasty bowls, or Bruce Nauman videos.

governance, the substantive problem we faced was finding

There is also a sense in which the recognition of pattern

somewhere to work. Here Garth proved invaluable. He had

(a fundamental part of perceptual processes) has to do

relocated his studio several times and was very connected

with the application of acquired, or given, rules. Although I

to the mass of artists jostling for affordable space in the

did not learn this from Garth, as I began to see more of his

bleak and straitened property market of 1970s London.

work in the context of our developing friendship, something

It was Garth who provided the contact and made the

which might at some time have seemed wayward, quirky or

introductions that led us to a church hall (a former primary

even downright stubborn became compelling.

school building) in Baldwins Gardens, just off Chancery Lane, where the high ceilinged fourth floor assembly room

One of the first (two) sculptures by Garth that I saw was

had long stood empty. Garth and I met the verger, Miss

Babar (1965).4 Exhibited in Bristol in the summer of 1968 in a

Nesbitt, a crop-headed and engagingly sprightly woman

show titled New British Sculpture/Bristol. In the accompanying

in her late sixties, many times prior to signing a lease on

catalogue, a photograph by Derek Balmer shows the

the space. It was also Garth who helped with getting small

work behind a prominent ‘No Entry’ sign being quizzically

grants for paint, for a skip to clear the rubbish into and for

examined by two parking attendants (as if about to issue a

small propane heaters and the deposit on (much larger)

ticket). So the attribution of a stubborn, quirky waywardness

gas cylinders. These were greatly needed as the hall was

does not seem unjustified. In the accompanying statement

woefully under heated. A large, pot-bellied Victorian cast-

Garth says:

iron stove could, with continued stoking, be made to glow almost red with no discernible benefit (sweeping the floor

The obvious theme of these sculptures concerns the local

was a more effective method of warming up, though the

softening and distortion of hard forms. It should be clear that

benefits were short lived). In trying to find a way for us to

they are in no way portraits of events – they do not attempt

show something of Manydeed’s collective activities and to

a representation of what would have happened to the forms

help us to transition to another plane in the art world, Garth

concerned if they had been treated in the way described. In

used his position to bring us to the attention of curators and

fact these sculptures originated conceptually as structures

art officers. Garth showed an unusual collegiality towards

related to ideas about and sensations of events rather than

us as artists, treating us as neither more nor less than equal.

their appearance.

As my own practice has developed I have come to realize

In other words he reminds us that although it is relatively

that one of the ways to make art is to apply (selected) rules

simple to say what it is that these sculptures resemble,

and deal with their consequences. I think this is as true of

that resemblance is misleading. The phrase ‘structures

the welter of marks that build up on the surface of a painting

related to ideas about’ implies a studied distancing from

Babar, on cover of new British sculpture/Bristol, courtesy of Derek Balmer and Arnolfini, Bristol

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Garth Evans Sculpture – Beneath the Skin

St. Mary’s No. 1, 1978, welded polythene sheet, 8.5 x 307.3 x 314 (11.4 x 121 x 123.5), Arts Council Collection, installed at Longside gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Photograph by Anna Arca, courtesy Arts Council Collection

Localized changes of condition

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appearances whilst using the constraint of a particular

our neural networks. This constant state of ever shifting

imagined condition, ‘local softening’, to generate con-

electrical activity corresponds to our perceptions of and

sequences. In helping to select an exhibition of Garth’s

ratiocinations about our internal and external worlds as

work held at Longside Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park in

they change, and our behaviour as it develops; the motley

2013 it was noticeable that such local softening, the sensory

palimpsest of our lives. One of the many remarkable things

impact of imagined or enacted area-specific changes of

about this barrage of neural activity is its consistency from

condition on structural form, had been a consistent device

moment to moment, minute to minute, hour by hour, day by

in Garth’s methods – the use and limitations of the linear

day. It is an extremely stable system. I have often thought

polythene welder in making St. Mary’s No. 1 (1974–75) being

that the reason people have, since pre-history, always liked

a particularly clear example. The distinction between

taking mind altering substances and pursuing extreme

the purpose of knowledge and the process of knowledge

behaviours of many sorts, is not so much to do with insight

that Worringer points to in the paragraph quoted at the

or with forgetfulness but to do with the sheer enjoyment

beginning of this essay is apropos. There is no empiricism

of experiencing the creative and particular ways in which

or testing of results, the work is autonomous, an ‘end in

the disrupted system restores balance and re-establishes

itself’ living ‘by its own particular expression’. When Garth,

that consistency, however much it may fly in the face of

on behalf of his colleagues, introduced the ‘A Course’, he

knowledge, expectation or experience. This is, in part,

wasn’t starting an experiment, he was opening a door.

the deep pleasure that arises for me in looking at much of Garth’s work, that from a disrupted or enfeebled system, he

We build our perceptions of the world through the firing

develops and sustains a process that conjures non-rational

of millions of neurons and their associated synapses in

or creative products that are, nevertheless, consistent.

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Garth Evans Sculpture – Beneath the Skin

Works 1964–68

Tilt, 1964, fiberglass, paint, 101.5 x 127 x 43.2 (40 x 50 x 17), private collection

Counterfeit, 1964, fiberglass, paint, 152.4 x 152.4 x 12 (60 x 60 x 28), Leicestershire Education Authority

Eclipse, 1965, fiberglass, pigment, 55.9 x 182.8 x 182.8 (22 x 72 x 72), Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia

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Garth Evans Sculpture – Beneath the Skin

Works 1964–68

Untitled No. 37, 1967, fiberglass, paint, 185.4 x 320 x 274.3 (73 x 126 x 108), private collection

Maid of Honour, 1965, fiberglass, paint, 281 x 45.7 x 45.7 (111 x 18 x 18), private collection

Untitled No. 38, 1967–68, fiberglass, pigment, 182.8 x 61 x 61 (each element 72 x 24 x 24)

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Garth Evans Sculpture – Beneath the Skin

Works 1964–68

Untitled No. 39, 1967–68, fiberglass, paint, 213.3 x 309.8 x 243.8 x 20.3 (84 x 122 x 96 x 8), private collection

Untitled No. 40, 1968, aluminium, paint, 203.2 x 198.1 x 243.8 (80 x 78 x 96), Hirshorn Museum, Washington D.C.

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