Alison Wilding
Detail of Mesmer, 2016, see Plate 2
Acanthus, asymmetrically
in association with
17 St George Street London w1s 1fj +44 (0)20 7042 3233 www.waterman.co.uk
Sculpture
1 Whervish 2016 Crystacal, wood ash, rebar, Iranian string and wax 119 x 33 x 33 cm / 46 ⅞ x 13 x 13 in
2 Mesmer 2016 Walnut, beech, teak, aluminium and tin 172 x 245 x 56 cm / 67 ¾ x 96 ½ x 22 ⅛ in
3 Starcrossed 2016 Oriental plane and mild steel 125 x 50 x 54 cm / 49 ¼ x 19 ¾ x 21 ¼ in
4 Re-re-re-tread 2016 Pearwood and tin 22 x 9 x 22 cm / 8 ⅝ x 3 ½ x 8 ⅝ in
5 Drone 2 2012 Alabaster, cast fibreglass and paint 47 x 61 x 8 cm / 18 ½ x 24 ⅛ x 3 ⅛ in
6 Belvedere 2011 Plaster with wood ash, cast fibreglass and cast bronze 113 x 151 x 155 cm / 44 ½ x 59 ½ x 61 ⅛ in
7 Werewolf 2011 Acrylic paint on birch plywood, rubber and galvanised wire 110 x 165 x 165 cm / 43 Ÿ x 65 x 65 in
8 Ruff 2010 Brass, nylon, jasper and acrylic paint 8.5 × 20 × 19 cm / 3 ⅜ × 7 ⅞ × 7 ½ in
9 Nose Cone 1 2006 (right) Ceramic, pearwood and paint 13 x 10 x 17 cm / 5 ⅛ x 4 x 6 ¾ in
Nose Cone 2 2006 (left) Ceramic, pearwood and paint 12 x 9.7 x 16.5 cm / 4 ¾ x 3 ⅞ x 6 ½ in
10 Press 2 2006 Alabaster and papyrus 9.75 x 7 x 6 cm / 3 ⅞ x 2 ⅜ x 2 ⅜ in
11 Cluster 2004 Patinated copper and ceramic Each: 125 x 75 x 75 cm / 49 ¼ x 29 ½ x 29 ½ in
12 Foreign Body 1997 Copper and silicone rubber Each: 23 x 13.5 x 15 cm / 9 ¼ x 5 ¼ x 5 ⅞ in
13 Surge 1995 Neoprene, perspex and cast resin 340 x 252 x 38 cm / 133 ⅞ x 99 ¼ x 15 in
14 Pair 1 1994 – 5 Brass, copper and silver solder Each: 55 x 18.5 x 10 cm / 21 ⅝ x 7 ¼ x 4 in
15 Immersion 1988 Brass 99.7 x 48.3 x 55.9 cm / 39 ¼ x 19 x 22 in
16 Killjoy 2015 Cast and forged iron and bleached feather 11.5 x 29.5 x 29.5 cm / 4 ½ x 11 2⁄3 x 11 2⁄3 in edition of 3
17 Baby Shimmy 2014 Mirrored stainless steel and semi-precious beads on cast concrete base 29 x 67.5 x 36.8 cm / 11 ⅜ x 26 ⅝ x 14 ½ in edition of 5, plus 2 artist’s proofs
18 Rising 2001 Cast acrylic 17 x 14 x 17 cm / 6 ¾ x 5 ½ x 6 ¾ in edition of 35, plus 3 artist's proofs
19 Floodlight 2001 Cast acrylic 11 x 22 x 17 cm / 4 ⅜ x 8 ⅝ x 6 ¾ in edition of 12, plus 3 artist's proofs
Drawings
20 Simian Drawing XI 2016 Ink, collage and pencil 28 x 38.5 cm / 11 ⅛ x 15 ⅛ in
21 Simian Drawing VIII 2016 Ink, collage and pencil 28 x 38.5 cm / 11 ⅛ x 15 ⅛ in
22 Simian Drawing III 2016 Ink and pencil 28 x 38.5 cm / 11 ⅛ x 15 ⅛ in
23 Simian Drawing VII 2016 Ink, collage and pencil 28 x 38.5 cm / 11 ⅛ x 15 ⅛ in
24 Simian Drawing I 2016 Ink, collage and pencil 28 x 38.5 cm / 11 ⅛ x 15 ⅛ in
25 Simian Drawing IX 2016 Ink, collage and pencil 28 x 38.5 cm / 11 ⅛ x 15 ⅛ in
26 Household Gods 5 2015 Acrylic ink, pencil and water-soluble pencil 28 x 38 cm / 11 ⅛ x 15 in
27 Household Gods 7 2015 Acrylic ink, pencil and water-soluble pencil 28 x 38 cm / 11 ⅛ x 15 in
28 Household Gods 8 2015 Acrylic ink, pencil and water-soluble pencil 28 x 38 cm / 11 ⅛ x 15 in
29 Household Gods 9 2015 Acrylic ink, pencil and water-soluble pencil 28 x 38 cm / 11 ⅛ x 15 in
30 Heads Series 8 2014 Ink and water-soluble pencil 42 x 59.5 cm / 16 ½ x 23 ⅜ in
31 Heads Series 5 2014 Ink and water-soluble pencil 42 x 59.5 cm / 16 ½ x 23 ⅜ in
32 Impact Series 2 2007 Acrylic and collage 23 x 21.5 cm / 9 ⅛ x 8 ½ in
33 Impact Series 9 2007 Acrylic and collage 32 x 45 cm / 12 ⅝ x 17 ¾ in
Beauty / Speed / Devastation A conversation between Alison Wilding and Sarah Whitfield
Sarah Whitfield: Could you begin by saying something about the importance to you of stories?
you use imagery from the present day (as in the Drone Series, 2012) and imagery from ancient myth (as in Phaeton, 2016)?
Alison Wilding: This is an interesting question! I think stories are an important part of being in the world but I don’t want them in my sculpture. And yes, I do read a lot of fiction where, on the whole, the narrative drive is linear. Whereas, for me, looking at sculpture is a circular experience, an experience that enables you to enter at any point and then move backwards and forwards over time and through memory. Having said that (and I am nothing if not contradictory), a key text for me is Ovid’s Metamorphoses. After all, transformation is at the heart of existence. For instance, the other day I was at a train station in the Midlands and a small flock of starlings performed an incredible display of shape shifting in the air, a miracle of three dimensional geometry, before coming down to roost in a line of trees. Very occasionally I’ve titled a work after Ovid’s myths. For example, Echo, 1995, is a sculpture whose title made a link, I thought appropriate, with the myth of Echo and Narcissus, but I made no attempt to recreate the myth.
I don’t think so. I see the drone as a contemporary malignant sprite, not unlike Ariel in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. I am drawn to the conflicting spectacle of beauty/speed/devastation in all its manifestations, whether as a raptor, an armament, or, as you say, in Phaeton.
Would it be fair to say that a title such as In a Dark Wood, 2012, suggests some sort of myth? That title is a quote from the opening lines of Dante’s Inferno: In the middle of the road of our life I found myself once more in a dark wood Where the straight way was lost. It’s a literal description of the sculpture, which is a monocoque (single-shell) construction like Echo, made from strips of laminated and stained wood, a dark and dense hive in which about fifteen grey spheres are embedded. Do you see any difference between the way
There does seem to be an awareness of impending danger in your more recent work. I’ve never seen a stealth bomber and I’m not sure who has, but, in 2001, I became obsessed with the deadly combination of its aesthetic together with its cloak of invisibility, and this has influenced several subsequent sculptures: Stealth 1 and 2, both 2001, Rust, 2008, Aerial, 2008, and two series of drawings, the Footprint Series, 2001, and Impact Series, 2007 (Plates 32 & 33). At one time I hoped to make a monumental monocoque version that, in my dreams, would be installed in a forgotten airfield in Essex, but this hasn’t happened. Other than the more ubiquitous drone, I don’t recognise the presence or intimation of danger in my sculpture. I think there is a greater tendency towards melancholy. If stories don’t kick-start the work, what does? Sometimes work comes from work. One sculpture may simply dictate the direction of the next and perhaps this itself becomes an unfolding narrative in which a series of works have shared sensibilities. Once, when I was embarking upon a new exhibition, a dream I’d had, about several sculptures completely unknown to me, became the starting point for two new works, although the final sculptures – With this Rock and Werewolf (Plate 7), both 2011 – bore little relation to the ones I’d dreamt about.
And now? Currently the kick-start depends upon an impulse or a decision to take action – and it must be a physical action, however irrational or banal, rather than a theoretical plan where the next move is known. I like the combination of ‘let’s see what happens if …’ with something that is slow and evolving. And if that sounds vague it’s because it’s that mysterious process where uncertainty couples with curiosity and base materials in order to become transformed into an object that was not previously known about or even understood. For instance, Mesmer, 2016 (Plate 2), began with two lengths of timber being joined together. I do ask myself whether transformation is analogous to, or the sister of, phenomena. Years ago, not long after leaving the Royal College of Art, I did some reading around phenomena and the physical properties of materials. This resulted in a series of drawings with texts describing speculative and ambiguous situations or experiments. One of these concerned humidity: mould in cheese and the liquification of salt, which I first recognised in Aesop’s fable The Merchant and his Donkey. A few years later, in happier times, I used the mutability of salt in a sculpture, Untitled (with Salt), 1980, in which a small quantity of salt, placed in a tube of black silk suspended from the ceiling, supports a frail standing tube made of brass. The sculpture remaining upright was then contingent upon it being surrounded by the correct humidity. You seem to like ‘containing’ shapes like ovals, cylinders and blocks, forms that carry the suggestion of the hidden, or even the sense of something being protected. I do like ‘containing’ shapes. The cylinder, the ‘blocky’, the vessel perhaps. Whether this is a boat or a house I don’t know, probably neither. It may be that the closed box is the ultimate mysterious object.
Xerxes’ Tomb, Naqsh-e-Rustam, Fars Province, Iran
Talking about closed boxes, can you tell me about Rising, 1994 (Plate 18)? Presumably the acrylic cast is solid, but there is a very powerful illusion of a closed interior space filled with some indefinable and worryingly unstable substance.
Stagg Field Reactor, University of Chicago, drawn by Melvin A Miller, 1946
Rising is a small, solid acrylic cast – a bit like an imagined engine block in shape. It was my response to The Multiple Store’s request to make an edition. At the time I was obsessed with the first nuclear fission experiments that took place in the squash courts of the University of Chicago in 1942. I sourced some of the plans and drawings of the construction of graphite rods and arrived at my own version. It resembles only itself, being a solid mass of rising cloud form. Rising is an edition, but each one is different due to the individual mix of pigment used in the pour. I’m not sure if the backstory of the work constitutes a narrative. I like to think the object speaks for itself. It certainly does. Leading on from the idea of containment, many of your sculptures have a strong sense of place, a feeling of traces left behind by centuries of human history. In the past year I’ve been mud-larking along the foreshore of the Thames, which, being a tidal river, scours the mud every day, offering up detritus and treasure from over two millennia – from palaces, hovels and industry. The foreshore is an exhilarating place to be – somewhere between land and water – and it’s about getting your eye in, building up your knowledge. Once an object is found and identified, it’s easy to spot it again. And there is a powerful connection with what was once happening on the adjacent banks, whether shipbuilding, abattoirs, potteries or the result of centuries of domestic waste. Carl Andre made an exhibition in 1972 from twisted metal he had salvaged from the Thames. I particularly like the thick, black, irregular bases of ancient glass bottles, brass buttons and Elizabethan brass pins.
The Thames foreshore is obviously loaded with historical associations. Do you seek out places with particular associations? I have been to many evocative, enchanted places, chasing even the merest evidence of a myth – to any of the alleged burial places of Alexander the Great, or Aphrodite’s chair in Cyprus, or Xerxes’ tomb cut into a high cliff face at Naqsh-e-Rustam in Fars Province, Iran. But these have never been research projects for work; they are simply benchmarks of experience for the memory. There is one exception, though. I went to Lalibela in northern Ethiopia to visit the 12th century church of Bete Giyorgis. I walked along a high plateau and suddenly looked down and there, way below ground level, was this beautiful, lichen-covered building, cut out from tufa, a soft volcanic rock. From the air it’s identifiable by its cruciform shape. Sometime later I was both casting and constructing some small objects, Elevated 1, 2009, and Ruff, 2010 (Plate 8), which, by osmosis and not consciously, seemed to connect with Bete Giyorgis insofar as the ground and the roof of these blocky cave-like shelters were reversed. Concealing seems to have been a recurring theme in your work. Before 1990, my sculpture was often fabricated, or partly fabricated, from sheet materials. My father-in-law, who was a coppersmith, gave me three weighty volumes that comprehensively demonstrated how to fabricate any given form from sheet material – a way of working not so far removed from dressmaking. A frequent form in my work at that time was a truncated cone, often asymmetrical, with the skin of the object concealing the interior void. I associated works such as Vestal, 1985, Hearth, 1986, or Immersion, 1988 (Plate 15), with the female body, within which the heart, or the engine of the work, is invisible. Other works of that period can be seen as literally under wraps, such as Deep Water, 1988, and Mantle, 1989. Ultimately, this method of
Bete Giyorgis, Lalibela, Ethiopia
fabrication with its hidden interior spaces became over familiar and predictable, and I had to find a way of breaking through that particular impasse. Inland, 1990, was the first monocoque construction to reveal both the interior and the exterior of the object simultaneously, and this has opened up and redirected the trajectory of my work. In the monocoque sculptures – about eleven so far – the visual complexity changes with the given material, so it can feel quite aggressive if made of metal, as in Rust, 2008, or it can be mesmerically changeable in a translucent material like PVC/acrylic, such as Terrestrial, 2003. Concealment suggests the invisible, which, in turn, suggests silence. I am conscious of silence being an integral part of your work, although this may not be intentional. Your question reminds me of a 1982 sculpture by Richard Wentworth, Glad That Things Don’t Talk, which is a line from the song ‘If Walls Could Talk’ by Ry Cooder. Richard’s sculpture, with its rubber overshoe on a mat with two wedges attached at the heel by a wire to a lead sphere, says it all. I used to think, and now I’m really not sure whether this is true, because the older and more experienced you get the more there are clouds of uncertainty over everything, but nevertheless I have said that the early sculptures came out of a certain conflict and probable frustration from dealing with recalcitrant materials. An example would be Scree, 1984, or Plunder, 1986, two wall sculptures that were resolved with angry gestures. I threw sand into the copper container of Scree after every other attempt to make sense of the work had failed – most of the pigmented sand dropped out but, through surface tension, just enough stayed in the bucket fixed to the wall, in the way that dry sand tumbles down a sand dune. Similarly, as a last resort, I furiously stuffed the linen into the carved wood of Plunder, which then immediately began to take on the folds and shadows of carved marble. Both these works
disclose nothing of their making. They are in a zone of silence that annoyingly I haven’t been able to repeat. In a much later sculpture, Surge, 1995 (Plate 13), I am deliberately gagging the work. There are two small, dark, sharp objects, each contained within a larger occluded perspex cone, sitting on a vast rubber mat. Making things difficult or slow to apprehend would seem to be a common and slightly perverse trait in my work. And in answer to your question, I am not conscious of trying for silence. I do think that on the whole my sculpture is sober. If it were drunk it would be a different story. Do you ever think of works as ‘forms waiting to happen’, a phrase Richard Serra uses to describe his own sculpture? I don’t believe there is an elemental form ‘waiting to be set free’ from a block of wood or stone. I do love problem solving, though. In my studio there is a lot of ‘stuff’ sitting around. Some of it has been transported from studio to studio over decades and might never be used. Just occasionally, something will spring to life. For instance, I had an unwanted Venetian blind, made of around forty strips of good quality wood, which I’d dismantled and left in a stack. I’ve also had a longstanding preoccupation with a small spiral constructed from acid-etched pieces of brass (which became part of Tracking, 2007). Observing how a spiral can morph into a fan and thinking about where that might lead, I saw that the Venetian blind (‘up and down’) could be manipulated into a fan (‘back and forth’). Furthermore, it could be transformed by threading a small length of the original cord through the holes in the slats, enabling it to stand on the floor like a self-supporting tepee (‘round and round’). Also lying around the studio for at least ten years were various black enamelled brass shapes illustrated with Chinese scenes including fans. Two of these shapes pinned to the wall behind the reconstructed
How did you come across a material such as polypropylene?
blind became part of Heat & Light, 2014. Subsequently, I wanted to remake this work – which is collapsible and portable – in plaster, so that the structure would be immovable and permanent. By gluing strips of thin Japanese paper over the surface of the object to hold it together, and then making a silicone mould, Heat & Light was remade, cast into plaster and raised slightly from the ground. And so it became Whervish, 2016 (Plate 1). I was struck by how, when the slats of wood were cast in plaster, they resembled sharp creases in cloth, and this reminded me of the pleated tunic worn by the Motya Charioteer, c. 460 – 450 bc, which I’d seen at the British Museum at the time of the 2012 Olympics. Then, of course, the original wooden section of Heat & Light had to be remade, because it broke during the casting process, and sourcing an equivalent Venetian blind proved to be really difficult. Making sculpture can be such a tortuous business!
In 1990, I was looking for a new sheet material as an alternative to metal. I discovered polypropylene, which was the cheapest sheet plastic that was thin and flexible – used for abattoir doors etc. I used it first in Fuse, 1990, a sculpture that was part steel and part welded black polypropylene. While I was at Theoplastic – the plastic engineering company in Barking that subsequently fabricated Inland, 1990 – I spotted the translucent polypropylene and naturally wanted to exploit this translucency. This was at the forefront of my mind when I was in Sydney on a residency at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. There I obtained a large block of sandstone and saw the opportunity to make a translucent polypropylene structure that both revealed and concealed the sandstone rock, which became Seal, 1990 (Arts Council Collection).
How far does the choice of materials determine the character of a work?
On the subject of materials, are there any you would avoid at all cost?
Contrary to what many people think, I’m not obsessed with materials and, if I’ve used a huge variety of stuff over the years, it’s because there’s lots of it freely available in the world. I don’t believe in a hierarchy of materials. All materials, however mundane, can be transformed. I used to make work from brown paper. Years ago, when I had a burning desire to make things but had little money, I used bits of wire, wood and a lot of paper – all sorts of bits and pieces. Obviously nothing was kept because I didn’t even think of keeping anything. It was just making. Mesmer, the most recent work to date, was made entirely, or almost entirely, from materials I already had in the studio and that’s partly because I needed to kick-start the work, to achieve some momentum, and partly because I’m quite frugal in my habits. I don’t like wasting material and the wood I used was left over from some trestles.
As a student in my first year at Ravensbourne we were offered a course in stone carving. In the stone yard was a pile of alabaster offcuts which, as a material, I found quite repugnant, so I pursued a course of letter cutting in Portland stone instead. Twenty-five years later, I was making – with assistance – Harbour, 1994, from two 3 1/2 tonne blocks of alabaster. I have a love-hate relationship with the material. For instance, I dislike the high polish of Jacob Epstein’s Jacob and the Angel, 1940 – 41 (Tate Gallery Collection), but am nevertheless intrigued by the stone – it can sweat when moved from a dry to a damp environment and its softness means it can be worked with a variety of techniques at speed. Weight is obviously an essential property of sculpture and you seem to like playing with it – either by using it or working against it.
I’m thinking of the way the pink/grey colours of the alabaster contradict the weight of the stone in Anglepress, 2007, for example, or Press 2, 2006 (Plate 10), and the way the weight is subtly alluded to by the pressure exerted on the thin strip of papyrus running through the middle.
Henbury Meteorite Crater, Central Australia, 1999 © Marilyn Bridges
Yes, weight. I love it. Anglepress is a sandwich of papyrus between two pieces of alabaster. The top of the sculpture is rugged like a miniature mountain plateau following a natural break in the stone. I bought a roll of papyrus in Egypt and, as alabaster is a stone much used there (although it’s not my ‘streaky bacon’ English alabaster), it seemed obvious to bring them together. The papyrus is crushed by the weight of the alabaster bearing down on it, but it is also separating the two halves of the sculpture. And that is an example of the never-ending game of scissors, paper, stone. You mentioned how impressed you had been by Richard Serra’s Weight and Measure, 1992, when it was shown in the Duveen Gallery at Tate Britain. Yes. Think how much deeper and more thoughtprovoking this work is than his massive space-filling sculptures! Weight has such a connotation with depth – the core of the earth, the pull of gravity and how we ourselves stand up. Before it was either lost or stolen, I had a small, extremely heavy meteorite (about 4.5cm in length) with a cut end showing its typical Widmanstatten pattern. I bought it in 1990 from Gregory, Bottley & Lloyd, who told me it had been found in Henbury, Australia. As I’ve said, I associate weight with speed and potential destruction, so the connection between my small meteorite fragment and the massive crater in which it played a part was very powerful. There is a natural affinity between landscape and quarried stone which has to do with geological time. When I was in Australia (having made Seal in Sydney) I went to Uluru, the sandstone monolith in the Northern Territory. Its red-brown colour exactly matched
the top layer of my piece of quarried sandstone which I’d left uncut. Most of Uluru is actually underground – 2.5km below, in fact – just as half of the sandstone block of Seal is concealed within the plastic structure, as a stone might block a hole. You seem to embrace the idea of the monumental, even when working on a relatively small scale. Both Anglepress and Seal suggest to me the enormity of geological time. I take it that, once you determine the scale for a work, you are never tempted to recreate it on a larger scale? Both Seal and Anglepress inhabit the scale that was intended. On the whole I dislike the idea that sculpture should expand to fill a space. As a rule, ideas don’t immediately correlate to scale or material. I might decide to make a small hand-held object simply as a respite from making a sculpture on a larger scale and from a need to be more ‘hands on’. I can run through in my head a list of all kinds of possible materials for a job, but sometimes the most appropriate material to convey an idea is the exact opposite of what I ultimately choose to do. The obvious thing doesn’t always make sense because I’m not following an instruction leaflet. If you make a mistake, or something doesn’t work out exactly as you had planned, do you accept the consequences as ‘a happy accident’, or do you start over? I have just been reading Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by the neurosurgeon Henry Marsh. It’s an honest and beautifully written account of his successes and failures as a surgeon treating brain tumours. He admits that his failures were sometimes due to mistakes he made – inevitable with such complex procedures. I’m not sure what exactly constitutes a mistake when making a sculpture because hopefully I’m constantly trying to do a new thing by not following any formula (and how hard that is!). So what might
be construed as a mistake can turn out to be a new direction. It’s a matter of being alert to this possibility. I’m not a brilliant technician, but with years of experience I do understand how to move stuff, what will take the weight, how to balance objects, what will stand up and what won’t balance, allowing, that is, for all those mistaken errors of judgement. And we need a lot of stuff to make a work. It’s not just a studio, it’s also a workshop. Like any artist, I’m a mine of information about processes, stockists, fabricators and the like. I think artists are generous in sharing their sources. Recently, the best thing to have happened is that a branch of Leyland, the builders’ merchants, has opened on Mile End Road among the chicken shops. The days of melting lead in the kitchen at home and patinating metal in the bath are over! Does it ever happen that a spontaneous thought can change the direction of a work? Yes, a spontaneous thought can certainly change the direction of a work, but spontaneous thoughts don’t always seem so great the day after. I’m a great believer in working slowly. For example, with Mesmer, I thought it would be a brilliant idea for the central wooden matrix of the work to hold all four of the V-shaped ‘legs’ together by embedding powerful magnets inside. This just didn’t work, although magnets are used elsewhere in the piece. When the work was first assembled, one of the ‘legs’ proved to be slightly raised off the ground, which was not my intention. So was it laziness, or seeing that the upraised ‘leg’ gave the work a different dynamic, that made me decide to keep it as it was? There was something reactionary in this – making a formal decision that belonged more to the 1960s! As the wooden matrix split under the strain of containing so many magnets, it was remade. When the work was reassembled, the V-shaped ‘leg’ was firmly on the ground as originally intended. That was an interesting moment… As I walked to Lidl to get some supplies, I concluded that the first ‘wrong’
version of the ‘leg’ was correct and that meant cutting a piece from the perfectly measured length of wood in order to relift it from the floor. Do you ever feel that you need to work against your own skills as a sculptor? I don’t think I have any particular making skills so I wouldn’t know what working against them meant! As I’ve said before, I love problem solving, especially when a sculpture goes horribly wrong and needs a rethink. In terms of making a work, it’s often not the materials that are special, unusual or challenging but what can possibly be done with them, and this can require assistance. Do you work with assistants? I don’t have anything like a team working for me. Usually it’s just one person at a time and this can lead to a fantastically enjoyable and creative situation in the studio. For instance, I set George, my current assistant, a challenge to cut a very complicated geometric shape into the interior of a length of oriental plane. He had no experience of working with wood in this way, but the result – Starcrossed, 2016 (Plate 3) – clearly demonstrated his problem-solving skills. So for me, problem solving is the answer. Titles obviously serve a practical purpose, but how important are they to your work? Magritte, for example, thought of titles as a form of protection in the sense of warding off banal interpretations. Before 1981, I rarely titled anything, which these days can be an issue. So now Untitled, 1980, would be Untitled (with Bags), 1980. While in the past I’ve tried too hard to make every title apposite and also poetic, it’s no longer something that concerns me unduly. Usually a title will simply announce itself; sometimes when a work is finished, sometimes when it has just begun. It may be a
simple description of the work – Cluster, 2004 (Plate 11), which could be a still life, would be a good example of this. Some titles, like Killjoy, 2015 (Plate 16), which at the time seemed quite clever, now hint at a narrative that was never intended. Other titles, such as Belvedere, 2011 (Plate 6), meaning a viewing place, or Mesmer, which is the name of the Austrian physician who invented mesmerism, are names that evoke without being prescriptive. Titles of older works have often made reference to water, an otherwise impossible element to describe or capture – Well, 1985, Immersion, 1988, Deep Water, 1989, Stain, 1991, Harbour, 1994 – 96, Surge, 1995. A title can slightly remove the pressure from a work, and maybe that’s the same as protecting it from an overt interpretation and, in that case, I could agree with Magritte. But then there is Drone 2, 2012 (Plate 5), where the central object is clearly a fruit, a blue-green plum – which is a perverse title. When I was asked to provide a title for this exhibition I came up with Acanthus, asymmetrically. It doesn’t really make sense, except, of course, it does as I’m currently making a wall piece from acanthus imagery and asymmetry is central (or rather offcentre) to a lot of my sculpture. Henry Moore once said that the sculpture that moved him the most was the one that gave out ‘something of the energy and power of great mountains’. What sculpture (of any period, any place) would you say moves you the most? Henry Moore implies that the sculpture that moved him would be monumental. My feelings are somewhat different. What moves me depends very much on where I am and how I’m feeling. I’m not a collector, so I am more than content to be moved without needing to own anything. I am drawn to objects from antiquity, like the small bronze and gold leaf Chariot of the Sun, 15th century bce, from Denmark and so ancient. I have often sought refuge in the Parthenon Marbles, 5th century bce, in the British Museum, and have found incredible solace
looking at them. I know they should be in Greece, but I’m so glad they’re not. There is a heartstopping sarcophagus known as the Alexander Sarcophagus, 4th century bce, in mint condition in the Archeological Museum in Istanbul that lay buried in sand in Lebanon until the 19th century. It depicts battle scenes between the Greeks and the Persians, lion hunts and, of course, Alexander on his horse. One truly monumental sculpture that has moved me is Michael Heizer’s North, South, East, West, 1967, now at Dia:Beacon, New York. And I’ve always loved an early work of Rachel Whiteread’s, Fort, 1989. I could go on forever; Barbara Hepworth’s 1937 Pierced Hemisphere, a small marble object. And then, because his clothes are really sculptures, something by Alexander McQueen, such as the Armadillo Boot from his Spring/Summer 2010 collection Plato’s Atlantis. When you say ‘looking at my sculpture is not always easy’, is it because you think people find sculpture more visually demanding than painting? I doubt it, although there is more effort involved in walking around a sculpture than standing in front of a painting. When images move in front of our eyes ever faster, it would seem even more important to slow down and really look – at anything, whether a landscape or an art work. I make my work for myself and don’t set out to please anyone or cater to any particular demographic. Sculpture is made of materials that are already out there in the world, so how can that be alien? And if my work baffles the viewer, then maybe it’s because they cannot let go of the idea that it’s trying to tell them something ungraspable. Well, it isn’t. There is absolutely nothing to say that isn’t there in the work.
sarah whitfield is an art historian, writer and curator. she has written extensively on british and european art and is the editor of william scott catalogue raisonné of oil paintings, 2013.
The Trundholm Sun Chariot, 1400 bce, Collection National Museum of Denmark
Alison Wilding Born 1948 in Blackburn, UK. Currently lives and works in London
education 1970 – 73 Royal College of Art, London 1967 – 70 Ravensbourne College of Art and Design, Bromley 1966 – 67 Nottingham College of Art, Nottingham
2008 Alison Wilding: Tracking, Karsten Schubert, London, UK 2006 Alison Wilding, North House Gallery, Manningtree, UK Alison Wilding: Interruptions, Rupert Wace Ancient Art, London, UK 2005 Alison Wilding: New Drawings, The Drawing Gallery, London, UK Alison Wilding: Sculpture, Betty Cunningham Gallery, New York, NY, USA Alison Wilding: Vanish and Detail, Fred, London, UK
selected solo exhibitions
2003 Alison Wilding: Migrant, Peter Pears Gallery and Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh, UK
2017 Alison Wilding: Acanthus, asymmetrically, Offer Waterman, London, UK
2002 Alison Wilding: Template Drawings, Karsten Schubert, London, UK
2016 Alison Wilding: Arena Redux, Art House Foundation, London, UK
2000 Alison Wilding: Contract, Henry Moore Foundation Studio, Halifax, UK Alison Wilding: New Work, New Art Centre, Roche Court Sculpture Park, Salisbury, UK
2013 Alison Wilding, Duveen Galleries, Tate Britain, London, UK Alison Wilding: Deep Water, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, UK 2012 Alison Wilding: Drawing, ‘Drone 1 – 10’, Karsten Schubert, London, UK 2011 Alison Wilding: How the Land Lies, New Art Centre, Roche Court Sculpture Park, Salisbury, UK Alison Wilding: Art School Drawings from the 1960s and 1970s, Karsten Schubert, London, UK 2010 Alison Wilding: All Cats Are Grey…, Karsten Schubert, London, UK
1998 Alison Wilding: Désormais, Chapel of St John the Evangelist, Skipton Castle, Skipton, UK Alison Wilding: Ambit, Panns Bank Public Art Project, Civic Centre, Sunderland, UK Alison Wilding: Grounded, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland, UK 1997 Alison Wilding: A Project, Robert Miller Gallery, New York, NY, USA Alison Wilding: Territories, Edmonton Art Gallery, York University, York, Canada Alison Wilding: Intensities, Abbot Hall Museum and Art Gallery, Kendal, UK Alison Wilding, New Art
Centre, Roche Court Sculpture Park, Salisbury, UK Alison Wilding: Ambit, City Library, Art Centre, Sunderland, UK 1996 Alison Wilding: Sculptures, Musée des Beaux-Arts et de la Dentelle de Calais, Calais, France Alison Wilding: Echo, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, Ireland; Karsten Schubert, London, UK 1995 Harbour, Alison Wilding’s Studio, Tannery Arts, London, UK Alison Wilding: Echo, Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham, UK Alison Wilding: New Sculptures and Etchings, Karsten Schubert, London, UK 1994 Alison Wilding: Ambit, The Mattress Factory Art Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, USA Air and Angels (with Antony Gormley), ITN Building, London, UK 1993 Alison Wilding: Recent Sculptures, Karsten Schubert, London, UK Alison Wilding: Bare, Newlyn Art Gallery, Penzance and Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK 1992 Alison Wilding, Asher/Faure Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, USA 1991 Alison Wilding: Exposure, Henry Moore Foundation Studio, Halifax, UK Alison Wilding: Immersion, Sculpture from Ten Years, Tate Gallery, Liverpool, UK 1990 Alison Wilding: Sculptures, Karsten Schubert, London, UK 1989 Alison Wilding: Skulptura, Moderna Galerija, Ljubljan, Yugoslavia Alison Wilding, Hirschl & Adler Modern, New York, NY, USA
1988 Alison Wilding: 1987 – 88, Karsten Schubert, London, UK Alison Wilding: Sculpture, Asher/Faure Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, USA 1987 Alison Wilding: Sculptures, Karsten Schubert, London, UK Alison Wilding: Into the Brass, Richard Salmon Ltd., London, UK Projects: Alison Wilding, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, USA 1986 Alison Wilding, Galleri Lång, Malmö, Sweden Alison Wilding: New Sculpture, Richard Salmon Ltd, London, UK Alison Wilding: New Sculpture, Salvatore Ala Gallery, New York, NY, USA 1985 Alison Wilding, Salvatore Ala Gallery, Milan, Italy Alison Wilding, Serpentine Gallery, London, UK 1983 Alison Wilding, Salvatore Ala Gallery, New York, NY, USA 1982 Alison Wilding: Sculpture (with Shirazeh Houshiary), Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, UK 1976 Alison Wilding and Shelagh Wakely (with Shelagh Wakely), AIR Gallery, London, UK 1970 Young Friends of the Tate Gallery, Tate Gallery, London, UK
selected group exhibitions 2016 Sculpture as Object, Duveen Galleries BP Collection Display, Tate Britain, London, UK Extra Terrestrial, East Gallery NUA, Norwich University of the Arts, Norwich, UK
2015 Making It: Sculpture in Britain 1977 – 1986, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, UK Drawing Biennial 2015, Drawing Room, London, UK 2014 Multiple Market, Handel Street Projects, London, UK Shelagh Wakely: A View from a Window, Camden Arts Centre, London, UK Summer Exhibition 2014, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK Abstract Drawing, Drawing Room, London, UK 2013 Here We Go: A Changing Group Show, Karsten Schubert, London, UK Drawing Biennial 2013, Drawing Room, London, UK Drawings, Karsten Schubert, London, UK With An Apple I Will Astonish, Large Glass, London, UK 2012 Drawing: Sculpture, Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds, UK Unknown Fields: Recent British Drawings, Trinity Contemporary, London, UK 2011 Drawing Biennial 2011, Drawing Room, London, UK 2010 Super Farmers’ Market, Handel Street Projects, London, UK Summer Exhibition 2010, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK The Thought of Stuff, RBS Galleries, London, UK From Floor to Sky, Ambika P3 Gallery, University of Westminster, London, UK 2009 Multiple Store, Westbrook Gallery, London, UK The Black Page, Shandy Hall Gallery, Coxwold, UK Drawing Biennial 2009, Drawing Room, London, UK North House Gallery 10th Anniversary Show Part I and Part II: Mainly Sky, North House Gallery, Manningtree, UK 40 Artists, 80 Drawings, The
Drawing Gallery, Walford, UK Core, Betty Cunningham Gallery, New York, NY, USA 2008 Stuff: The Wharf Road Project, The Wenlock Building, London, UK 2007 Rummage: Sculptors’ Drawings, The Winchester Gallery, Winchester School of Art, UK Sculpture at McLaren, McLaren Technology Centre, London, UK 2006 Pairs: 16 Artists / 32 Drawings, The Drawing Gallery, Walford, UK Drawing Inspiration, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, UK How to Improve the World: 60 Years of British Art in the Arts Council Collection, Hayward Gallery, London, UK 2005 40 Artists, 40 Drawings, The Drawing Gallery, Walford, UK Raised Awareness, Tate Modern, London, UK Drawing Two Hundred, Drawing Room, London, UK The Print Show, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, UK Effervescence: La Sculpture ‘Anglaise’ dans les Collections Publiques Française de 1969 à 1989, Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Angers, Angers, France Responding to Rome: British Artists in Rome 1995 – 2005, Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, London, UK 2004 Visual Wit, Sir Hugh Casson Room, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK Daddy Pop: The Search for Art Parents, Anne Faggionato Gallery, London, UK 25 Artists 25 Drawings, The Drawing Gallery, Walford, UK 2003 Thy Neighbours’ Ox, Space Station Sixty-Five, London, UK Contemporary Collecting: New Art for Manchester, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, UK
Drawing One Hundred, Drawing Room, London, UK Nightwood, Rhodes & Mann Gallery, London, UK Autres Dentelles, Musée des Beaux-Arts et de la Dentelle de Calais, Calais, France Sculpture in the Close, Jesus College, Cambridge, UK Glad That Things Don’t Talk, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland Sterling Stuff: Sculptures in Silver, Sigurjón Ólafsson Museum, Reykjavík, Iceland 2002 …from little acorns… Early Works by Academicians, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK Shine, The Lowry Centre, Salford Quays, UK Contemporary Drawing Exhibition: Finalists of Pizza Express Prospects 2002, Essor Gallery Project Space, London, UK Summer Exhibition 2014, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK Pure Containment: Sculptures from the Arts Council Collection, Orleans House Gallery, Twickenham, UK 2000 Sculpture and the Divine, Winchester Cathedral, Winchester, UK Sculpture, an Abbey and a Cathedral, Gloucester Cathedral, Malmesbury Abbey, and Abbey House Gardens, Gloucester, UK Robert Hopper Memorial Exhibition, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, UK 1999 At Home with Art, a national touring exhibition from the Hayward Gallery, London, UK Furniture, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton and Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool, in association with Richard Salmon Gallery, London, UK Triennial Sculpture Exhibition, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, UK Forger L’espace: La Sculpture Forgée au XX Siècle, Musée des Beaux-Arts et de la Dentelle, Calais, France Shine, The Lowry, Salford, UK Sublime: The Darkness
and the Light: Works from the Arts Council Collection, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, UK Den Haag Sculptuur 1999, The Hague, The Netherlands Bankside Browser: An Archive, St. Christopher’s House, London, UK 1998 Richard Wentworth’s Thinking Aloud, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge and Camden Arts Centre, London, UK Forjar el Espacio: La Escultura Forjada del Siglo XX, Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, Gran Canaria, Spain International Drawing Workshops, RCA Drawing Studio, London, UK Interactive: An Exhibition of Contemporary British Sculpture, Amerada Hess Gallery, London, UK Drawing Itself, The London Institute Gallery, London, UK The Edward R. Broida Collection: A Selection of Works, Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL, USA 1997 Material Culture: The Object in British Art of the 1980s and 1990s, Hayward Gallery, London, UK Building Site, Architectural Association School of Architecture, London, UK Marking Presence, ArtSway, Lymington, Hampshire, UK 1996 Plastic, Richard Salmon Gallery, London; Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol; and The New Art Gallery, Walsall, UK A Sculptor’s Choice: Works Selected by Ann Christopher, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK Orte des Möglichen: Weibliche Positionen in der Bildenden Kunst, Achenbach Kunsthandel, Düsseldorf, Germany and Hypobank International S.A., Luxembourg British Abstract Art Part 3: Works on Paper, Flowers East, London, UK Between the Sheets, Ediciones Benveniste, Madrid, Spain
From Figure to Object: A Century of Sculptors’ Drawings, Frith Street Gallery and Karsten Schubert, London, UK Twelfth Cleveland International Drawing Biennale, Cleveland Gallery, Middlesbrough, UK 1995 Natural Settings, Chelsea Physic Garden, London, UK Cabinet Art, Jason & Rhodes Gallery, London, UK British Art of the 1980s & 1990s: Works from the Weltkunst Collection, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland In Passing, The Tannery, London, UK Home and Away: Internationalism and British Art 1900 – 90, Tate Gallery, Liverpool, UK Objects in Advance of the Concept, Burnaby Art Gallery, Burnaby, Canada Summer Group Show, Karsten Schubert, London, UK British Abstract Art, Part 2: Sculpture, Flowers East Gallery, London, UK Decadence, Trondheim Art Union, Trondheim, Norway, UK Here and Now, Serpentine Gallery, London, UK British Contemporary Sculpture: From Henry Moore to the 1990s, Auditoria de Galicia, Santiago de Compostela and Fundació de Serralves, Porto, Spain New Art Centre, Roche Court Sculpture Park, Salisbury, UK 1994 Group Show: Keith Coventry, Peter Davis, Anya Gallaccio, Zebedee Jones, Bridget Riley and Alison Wilding, Karsten Schubert, London, UK 1993 Recent British Sculpture, Arts Council of Great Britain touring exhibition, UK Cámaras de Fricción: Pedro Cabrita Reis, Sophie Calle, Alison Wilding, Juan Usle, Galería Luis Adelantado, Valencia, Spain Hindsight: Selected Works Made for the Henry Moore
Sculpture Trust Studio 1989 – 93, Henry Moore Sculpture Trust Studio, Halifax, UK Sculpture of the 1980s: Edward Allington, Tony Cragg, Julian Opie, Alison Wilding, Connaught Brown, London, UK Informationsdienst, Art Acker, Berlin, Germany Made Strange: New British Sculpture, Museum Ludwig, Budapest, Hungary Five Works: Keith Coventry, Michael Landy, Bridget Riley, Rachel Whiteread and Alison Wilding, Karsten Schubert, London, UK Then and Now: Twenty-Three Years at the Serpentine Gallery, Serpentine Gallery, London, UK Inadvertently: Stuart Arends, Judy Fiskin, Llyn Foulkes, Steve Gianakos, Maxwell Hendler, Barbara Kruger, Allan McCollum, Gwynn Murrill, Ellen Phelan, Alison Wilding, Asher Faure Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, USA In Site: New British Sculpture, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo, Norway 1992 Traces of the Figure, City Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke on Trent and Cartwright Hall, Bradford, UK Whitechapel Open 1992, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK Summer Group Show, Karsten Schubert, London, UK New Art Centre, Roche Court Sculpture Park, Salisbury, UK Fifth Anniversary Exhibition, Karsten Schubert, London, UK The Turner Prize 1992: Grenville Davey, David Tremlett, Damien Hirst, Alison Wilding, Tate Gallery London, UK Les Collections du Fonds Régional d’Art, Contemporain des Pays de la Loire au Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, Nantes, France 1991 Sculptors’ Drawings, Bellas Artes, Santa Fe, NM, USA The Lick of the Eye, Shoshana
Wayne Gallery, Santa Monica, CA, USA Pulsió (Louise Bourgeois, Pepe Espaliú, Alison Wilding), Sala d’Exposicions de la Fundació La Caixa, Barcelona, Spain 1990 Now for the Future: Purchases for the Arts Council Collection Since 1984, Hayward Gallery, London, UK Rebecca Horn, Willi Kopf, Richard Long, Alison Wilding, Centre d'art Contemporain du Domaine de Kerguéhennec, Bignan, France 1989 Second Istanbul Biennale, Istanbul, Turkey All That Matters: Richard Deacon, Tom Dean, Remo Salvadori, Alison Wilding, Art Gallery of Windsor, Ontario; Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon; Saidye Bronfman Centre, Montréal, Canada Britse Sculptuur: British Sculpture 1960 – 1988, Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp, Belgium Sculpture Anglaise 1960 – 88, Centre Régional d’Art Contemporain Midi-Pyrénées, Cedex, France 1988 Starlit Waters: British Sculpture, 1968 – 88, Tate Gallery, Liverpool, UK British Now: Sculpture et Autres Dessins, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, Montreal, Canada Brittanica: 30 Ans de Sculpture, Musée des BeauxArtes André Malraux, Le Havre; L'École D'Architecture de Normandie, Darnétal; Musée D'Évrex, Ancien Éveche, Évrex, France Cinquièmes Ateliers Internationaux des Pays de la Loire, Abbaye Royale de Fontevraud, Fontevraud, France British Art: The Literate Link, Asher/Faure Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, USA Changing Group Exhibition: Gunther Forg, Thomas Grunfeld, Bob Law, Thomas Locher, Ed Ruscha, Tony Tasset, Alison Wilding, Karsten
Schubert, London, UK Seriös, Gallerie Wanda Reiff, Maastricht, The Netherlands Vanitas, Norwich School of Art Gallery, Norwich, UK 1987 Edinburgh International: Reason and Emotion in Contemporary Art, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, UK Lead, Hirschl & Adler Modern, New York, NY, USA Viewpoint: British Art of the 80s, Musée Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels, Belgium Current Affairs: British Painting and Sculpture in the 1980s, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, UK; toured by the British Council to Mucsarnok, Budapest, Hungary; Narodni Galerie, Prague, Czech Republic; Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland Art Brittiskt 1980: Tal, Liljevalchs Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden and Sarah Hildén Museum, Tampere, Finland Beelden en Banieren, Fort Asperen, Acquoy, The Netherlands Atlantic Sculpture, Art Centre, College of Design, Pasadena, CA, USA Vessel, Serpentine Gallery, London, UK Twentieth Century British Sculpture, New Art Centre, Roche Court Sculpture Park, Salisbury, UK D. De Cordova, L. Ford, P. Randall-Page, S. Johnson, K. MacCarthy, H. Stylianides, M. Pennie, V. Woropay, A. Wilding, Chelsea School of Art, Manresa Road Gallery, London, UK Casting an Eye: Curated by Richard Deacon and Alison Wilding, Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK 1986 Summer Exhibition, Salvatore Ala, New York, NY, USA Jeffrey Dennis, Alan Green, Alison Wilding, Third Eye Centre, Glasgow, UK Between Object and Image, Palacio de Velázquez, Madrid; Fundación Caja de Pensiones, Barcelona; Museo de Bellas
Artes, Bilbao, Spain Sculpture: Nine Artists from Britain, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark Art and Alchemy, XLII Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy Prospect '86: An International Exhibition of Contemporary Art, Frankfurter Kunstvereins, Steinernen Haus am Romerberg, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany Third Generation Women, Canterbury Fringe Festival, Canterbury, UK Domenico Bianchi, Antony Gormley, Roberto Pace, Alison Wilding, Salvatore Ala Gallery, Milan, Italy 1985 The British Show, Art Gallery of Western Australia; Art Gallery of New South Wales; Queensland Art Gallery, Australia; National Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand 10 Years at AIR, AIR Gallery, London, UK Nuove Trame dell'Arte, Castello Colona, Genazanno, Italy Anniottanta, Galleria Comunale d'Arte Moderna, Bologna, Italy Trigon 85 Synonyms for Sculpture, Neue Galerie am Laudesmuseum, Graz, Austria The Irish Exhibition of Living Art, Guinness Hop Store, Dublin, Ireland Selected Works: Jene Highstein, Wolfgang Laib, Donald Lipski, Wolfgang Nestler, Klaus Rinke, Alison Wilding, Burnett Miller Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, USA 1984 Collazione Inglese, Scuola di San Pasquale, Venice, Italy The British Art Show, Arts Council of Great Britain, touring to City of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery; Royal Scottish Academy Edinburgh; Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield; Southampton Art Gallery, UK 1983 Figures and Objects, John Hansard Gallery, University of
Southampton, Southampton, UK Whitechapel Open, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK Tolly Cobbold/Eastern Arts 4th National Exhibition, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich; Museum of Modern Art, Oxford; Barbican Art Gallery, London; Talbot Rice Art Centre, Edinburgh; and Leeds City Art Gallery, Leeds, UK The Sculpture Show, Serpentine Gallery and Southbank Centre, London, UK Transformations: New Sculpture from Britain, 17th Biennale de São Paulo, Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Museo de Arte Moderna, Mexico City, Mexico; Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Portugal 1982 Le Sculpture/La Sculpture, The Drawing Schools Gallery, Eton College, Windsor, UK Wapping Artists Open Studio Exhibition, Wapping, London, UK Collazione Inglese, Scuola di San Pasquale, Venice, Italy Sculpture in the Garden, Camden Arts Centre, London, UK XVII Paris Biennale, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France Sarah Bradpiece, Richard Wentworth, Alison Wilding, St Paul’s Gallery, Leeds, UK 1981 GLAA Awards 1981, Woodland Art Gallery, London, UK Wapping Artists 1981, Open Studio Exhibition, Wapping, London, UK 1980 Eight Artists: Women: 1980, Acme Gallery, London, UK Whitechapel Open, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK Wapping Artists 1980, Open Studio Exhibition, Wapping, London, UK 1979 New Sculpture: A Selection,
Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK 55 Wapping Artists, Wapping, London, UK 1978 Six Sculptors, Riverside Studios, London, UK 1975 Space Studios, London, UK 1973 Clare Court, Trinity College, Cambridge, UK
selected public collections Abbot Hall Art Gallery and Museum, Kendal, UK Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia Arts Council of Great Britain, London, UK British Council Collection, London, UK British Museum, London, UK Cass Sculpture Foundation, Goodwood, UK Le Fonds Régional d'Art Contemporain, Pays de la Loire, France Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, UK Jesus College, Cambridge, UK Leeds City Art Gallery, UK Musée de Beaux Arts, Calais, France Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, UK Sheffield Galleries and Museums Trust, Sheffield, UK Tate Collection, London, UK Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK
nominations, awards and commissions 2014, Installation of Shimmy, commissioned by The Crown Estate and Exemplar, 10 New Burlington Street, London, UK 2013, Bryan Robertson Trust Award 2011, The Royal Academy of Arts Charles Wollaston Award 2009, Baptismal Font, Drinking Fountain and Garden Fountain commissioned by the United Reform Church for Lumen,
Regent's Square, London, UK 2008, Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award 2007, Joanna Drew Travel Award 2003, Installation of Migrant, commissioned by Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh, UK 2001, Elected to Royal Academy of Arts 1999, Installation of Ambit on the River Wear; commissioned by the City of Sunderland, UK 1998, Henry Moore Fellow at The British School in Rome 1992, Nominated for Turner Prize 1988, Nominated for Turner Prize 1981, GLAA Award
selected monographs and solo exhibition catalogues
1997 Alison Wilding: Territories, The Edmonton Art Gallery, York Alison Wilding: Intensities, Abbot Hall Museum and Art Gallery, Kendal
2006 How to Improve the World, Hayward Publishing, London Responding to Rome: British Artists in Rome 1995 – 2005, Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, London
1996 Alison Wilding: Sculptures 1989 – 1996, Musée des BeauxArts et de la Dentelle de Calais, Calais
2002 Royal Academy Illustrated 2002, Royal Academy of Arts, London
1995 Alison Wilding: Echo, Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham 1994 Alison Wilding: New Works at Tate Gallery St Ives, Tate Gallery, St Ives 1993 Alison Wilding: Bare, Newlyn Art Gallery, Penzance
2017 Alison Wilding: Acanthus, asymmetrically, Offer Waterman / Karsten Schubert, London, UK
1991 Alison Wilding: Immersion – Sculpture from Ten Years, Tate Gallery, Liverpool
2014 Alison Wilding: Vanish & Detail, Ridinghouse, London
1989 Alison Wilding, Hirschl & Adler Modern, New York
2011 Alison Wilding: Art School Drawings from the 1960s and 70s, Ridinghouse, London
1988 Alison Wilding: Sculptures 1987/88, Karsten Schubert, London
2008 Alison Wilding: Tracking, Ridinghouse, London Alison Wilding: The Embrace of Sculpture, Crescent Moon Publishing, Maidstone 2006 Alison Wilding: Interruptions, Rupert Wace Ancient Art, London
1985 Alison Wilding, Serpentine Gallery, London
selected anthologies and group exhibition catalogues 2014 Abstract Drawing: Curated by Richard Deacon, Ridinghouse and Drawing Room, London
2000 Alison Wilding: Contract, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds
2012 RA Now, Royal Academy of Arts, London
1998 Alison Wilding: Grounded, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland
2010 From Floor to Sky: The Experience of the Art School Studio, A&C Black, London
2001 Glad That Things Don’t Talk, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin 2000 Contract, Henry Moore Foundation, Leeds 1999 At Home with Art, Hayward Publishing, London Shine, Lowry Press, Salford Den Haag Sculptuur 1999, The Hague, The Netherlands 1998 Richard Wentworth's Thinking Aloud, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge The Edward R. Broida Collection: A Selection of Works, Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando 1997 Material Culture: The Object in British Art of the 1980s and 1990s, Hayward Publishing, London Plastic, Richard Salmon Gallery, London 1996 Richard Shone: From Figure to Object: A Century of Sculptors' Drawings, Frith Street Gallery and Karsten Schubert, London Orte des Moglichen: Weibliche Positionen in der zeitgenossischen Kunst, Achenbach Kunsthandel, Dusseldorf Drawing In All Directions, Cleveland International Drawing Biennale, Cleveland 1995 Contemporary British
Sculpture: From Henry Moore to the 90s, Santiago de Compostela and Fundacio de Serralves, Porto 1993 Recent British Sculpture, Arts Council of Great Britain, London Hindsight: Selected works made for the Henry Moore Sculpture Trust Studio 1989 – 93, Henry Moore Sculpture Trust Studio, Dean Clough 1992 The Turner Prize 1992, Tate Publishing, London 1991 Pulsio: Louise Bourgeois, Pepe Espaliu, Alison Wilding, Fundacio 'la Caixa, Barcelona 1989 British Art: The Literate Link, Asher-Faure, Los Angeles 1988 All That Matters: Richard Deacon, Tom Dean, Remo Salvadori, Alison Wilding, Art Gallery of Windsor, Ontario Starlit Waters, Tate Gallery, Liverpool Vanitas, Norwich School of Art, Norwich British Now: Sculpture & Other Drawings, Musée d'Art Contemporain de Montreal, Montreal Cinquiemes Ateliers Internationaux des Pays de la Loire, Abbaye Royale de Fontevraud, Loire Valley Seriös, Wanda Reiff Gallery, Maastricht, The Netherlands Brittania: 30 Ans de Sculpture, Musée des BeauxArtes André Malraux, Le Havre Now for the Future, Hayward Publishing, London 1987 Art Brittiskt 1980: Tal, Liljevalchs Konsthall, Stockholm Edinburgh International: Reason and Emotion in Contemporary Art, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh
1985 The British Show, British Council, London 1984 Synonyms for Sculpture, Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum, Graz Entre El Objecto y La Imagen, British Council, London and Madrid Prospect '86, Frankfurt Kunstverein, Frankfurt 1983 Figures and Objects, John Hansard Gallery, London The Sculpture Show, Arts Council of Great Britain, London Transformations Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro 1982 Collazione Inglese, Scuola di San Pasquale, Venice Sculpture in the Garden, Camden Arts Centre, London Fifty Sculptors at the Serpentine and the South Bank, Hayward Gallery and Serpentine Gallery, London 1979 New Sculpture, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham Eight Women Artists, Acme Gallery, London
selected writings by the artist 2014 ‘Thoughts on an Undated Page from a Sketchbook’, The Art of Tess Jaray, Ridinghouse, London 2000 ‘The Passion Project’, Contract, Henry Moore Foundation, Leeds 2002 Royal Academy Illustrated 2002: A Selection from the 234th Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London 1994 Artists’ Lives: Essays on Sculpture 69, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds
Published on the occasion of the exhibition at: Offer Waterman, 17 St George Street, London w1s 1fj Exhibition dates: Friday 26 May – Wednesday 21 June 2017 Opening hours: Monday – Friday, 10 – 6; Saturdays, 12 – 4 Please contact the gallery for a list of available and ex-catalogue works.
Alison would like to thank Offer Waterman, Rebecca Beach, Karsten Schubert, Tom Rowland, Kostas Synodis, George Rae, Phil Brown and Sarah Whitfield. Design: Richard Ardagh Studio Exhibition Directors: Rebecca Beach & Tom Rowland Pre-Press: Dawkins Colour Printing: Park Publicity: Paget PR Publishers: Offer Waterman / Karsten Schubert, London ISBN: 978-0-9574188-7-5
Photography Credits Plates: 1 – 3, 16 & 17 FXP London; 4, 5, 9, 10, 14 & 18 Noah Dacosta; 12, 13, 15, 19 unknown; 6 & 7 New Art Centre, Roche Court; 8 Matthew Hollow; 11, 20 – 33 Prudence Cuming Associates. Interview reference images: Xerxes’ Tomb, Naqsh-e-Rustam, Fars Province, Iran, artist’s photograph © Alison Wilding; Stagg Field Reactor, University of Chicago University, drawn by Melvin A Miller, 1946, United States Department of Energy; Bete Giyorgis Church, Lalibela, Ethiopia, artist’s photograph © Alison Wilding; Henbury Meteorite Crater, Central Australia, 1999 © Marilyn Bridges; The Trundholm Sun Chariot, 1400 bce. Collection National Museum of Denmark, Photographer: John Lee, Source: The National Museum of Denmark.