MARKS ON THE WALL

Marks on the Wall presents a selection of straw and plaster sculptures, some with two-dimensional backdrops, as well as a selection of charcoal drawings, depicting gallant, humanized animals, both familiar and mythic. Hicks captures the transcendental power of beings with an extraordinary intensity that eclipses mere visual fact or scientific anatomy. Elephants, bears, swans, dogs, or Minotaurs, Hicks’ art radiates an archaic energy and is far more a spiritual study of life- human, animal or otherwise- than a formal study of animals.

out of her chair to get a closer look at the mark, the simplest solution to discerning what the mark was because she didn’t know whether the knowledge she would gain would bring her any contentment, and therefore was unsure if it was worth knowing. The narrator is critical of knowledge for knowledge’s sake, as she considers the ways in which society has used knowledge to order the world, like Whitaker’s Table of Precedency, has created only hierarchies and questions that are both exhausting and vexing. These so-called concretes cannot grasp the messiness of the works.

The exhibition takes its title from Virginia Woolf’s The Mark on the Wall , a 1917 short story about the epistemological musings of a woman who notices a dark spot on her wall. “How readily our thoughts swarm upon a new object, lifting it a little way, as ants carry a blade of straw so feverishly, and then leave it....” Wolf’s heroine ponders, winding between ideas of what the mark could be and the nature of knowledge.

“How readily our thoughts swarm upon a new object, lifting it a little way, as ants carry a blade of straw so feverishly, and then leave it....”

Though she considers it, she never actually gets up

The unnamed narrator declares that “No, no, nothing is proved, nothing is known. And if I were to get up at this very moment and ascertain that the mark on the wall is really… what should I gain?–Knowledge? Matter for further speculation? I can think sitting still as well as standing up. And what is knowledge? What are our learned men save the descendants of witches and hermits who crouched in caves and in woods brewing herbs, interrogating shrew-mice and writing down the language of the stars? And the less we honour them as our superstitions dwindle and our respect for beauty and health of mind increases.... Yes, one could imagine a very pleasant world. A quiet, spacious world, with the flowers so red and blue in the open fields.

A world without professors or specialists or housekeepers with the profiles of policemen, a world which one could slice with one's thought as a fish slices the water with his fin, grazing the stems of the water-lilies, hanging suspended over nests of white sea eggs.... How peaceful it is down here, rooted in the centre of the world and gazing up through the grey waters, with their sudden gleams of light, and their reflections–if it were not for Whitaker's Almanack–if it were not for the Table of Precedency!” has never aimed to make perfect, scientifically correct reproductions of nature. Rather, Hicks, in feverish acts of unselfconscious intuition, first internalizes and then decisively tackles the essential essence of the animals she captures. Hicks not only studies animals by looking, but also by feeling. She explores what it feels like to be, what it means to be, each animal: she internalizes the slinky, tentative glide of a fox, the sagging weight and deliberate gait of an elephant and the aloof yet confident bearing of a family dog.

"If I'm working on a piece and it starts to look terriblyfinishedandabitdead,thenI'llchuck it in the bin and re-start it again very fast… You must start again on a piece or get pulled back into the same mistakes."

Hicks creates her works through a similar line of thinking. Having never taken an anatomy class, Hicks

To capture this nature, Hicks’ artistic practice has long prioritized methods for lessening the gap between thought and making. In her large-scale drawings, constructed from quickly tearing off craft paper in large sheets, and drawing with charcoal, chalk, and pastel, she is able to swiftly, subconsciously and confidently unleash the figure bursting through her imagination.

Some parts of these animals are left unfinished, as Hicks is unconcerned with those elements not integral to the figure’s essence. She creates her threedimensional work in a similar nature through a unique sculpting process that involves plaster and straw. There is straw strewn about Hick’s studio (she has always surrounded herself with animals), which she continually gathers and mixes with plaster to quickly erect a figure. Due to the delicate nature of her chosen materials, the final sculpture is often cast in bronze. These sculptures appear as if walking up out of the earth from which they came, powerful, fleshly and noble. Marks on the Wall showcases select sculptures with backdrops drawn by Hicks, giving some of her latest sculptures their own environs and context. Although the animals exist within these drawn contexts, they also dominate them, elevating them by emphasizing both the their autonomy and individuality in nature.

Avoiding the romantic, descriptive, or simply anthropomorphic depictions of animals that have dominated the figurative animalier art of the past, Hicks embraces the messiness of animals, humans and everything in-between. Hicks has remarked, "If I'm working on a piece and it starts to look terribly finished and a bit dead, then I'll chuck it in the bin and re-start it again very fast. At least one in five goes into the bin. You must start again on a piece or get pulled back into the same mistakes." Her practice is rooted in her empathy for the creatures she creates, resulting in works that elicit a visceral response in addition to simple visual recognition. Hicks is far less interested in her work closely resembling a particular animal; rather, she wants the figure to be that animal in essence and spirit. She spends no time perfecting; her intuition is enough.

Like the narrator in The Mark on the Wall , who chooses to continue looking at the mark on her own terms, letting herself wind through her own musings rather than search for a concrete answer to the question she began with, Hicks primary concern is her emotional response to the animal she is capturing. “I’ve never wanted to make anatomically correct models and yet I do want you to sense that [a sculpture] is a living, breathing, soft being- a real person… It’s often surprising how things don’t actually look like how we imagine them to look. I am fascinated by how we filter images and information through our brains and how it comes out. It’s the emotional response to something that interests me most and that’s what I’ll make the sculpture about. It’s about the smell and the feel of a horse or person rather than the correct anatomical representation. And it’s very much my personal response.” weight of the bison’s heavy shoulders and the crane of its neck under that weight. Although much of the figure’s detail is obscured by the straw, the details left out or concealed are not integral to the work. In Night Garden , the feline’s stance is familiar, and the silence of that moment is visceral.

“I’ve never wanted to make anatomically correctmodelsandyetIdowantyoutosense that [a sculpture] is a living, breathing, soft being- a real person… It’s often surprising how things don’t actually look like how we imagine them to look.”

Hicks’ emotional response to the figures she is creating is just as true as any anatomical representation- and says just as much, if not more, about the figure and its nature. Hicks’ works give the creatures she is inspired by a depth and humanity that science alone cannot lend. Bison seems as if it is trudging through snow, its head slightly raised as if it has just heard the snap of a twig. In looking at the work, one can feel the

Known for creating heroic, humanized animals and mythic, beast-like humans, Hicks portrays other animals with more human attributes. Bear on a log is more reminiscent of a child boldly balancing while a parents’ eyes are turned, than any bear in the wild. Relic No. 2 , a mythic minotaur, is solemn if not forlorn; its horns have been shaved down- a common safety measure done by those working with cattle. These details create figures with more depth, understanding and recognition as part of Hicks’ spiritual study of beings. This study is rooted in looking and feeling, powered by Hicks’ role as a ”watchful alien.”

Hicks says, “I do my best, all day, every day, to be watchful and open. I lie in bed and look at the ceiling and follow different patterns and shapes in the blotches. I fiddle with shapes and ideas all the time. I draw every day and would go mad if I wasn’t allowed to… It all goes back to being the watchful alien. I really do believe that ninety percent of skill in art is to do with recognition, in recognizing the moment and in knowing when to stop. There can be something about a single line or a simple gesture that says more about a feeling or a body than you could plan in a million years.”

Nicola Hicks was born in London in 1960 and studied at Chelsea School of Art and the Royal College of Art. The daughter of two artists, Hicks, grew up producing art. She became an established presence among the artists of her generation at the young age of 25. In

1995, Hicks was awarded an MBE for her contribution to the visual arts. Hicks’ sculptures and drawings have been presented in numerous international museums and galleries. Hicks has completed several public commissions, including large-scale sculptures at Schoenthal Monastery, Langenbruck, Switzerland and in Battersea Park, London. Solo exhibitions include Flowers Gallery, London and New York City; St Paul’s Cathedral, London; Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, United States; and Tayloe Piggott Gallery, Jackson Hole, United States, among others. Hicks’ work was included in The Universal Addressability of Dumb Things, curated by Mark Leckey, as part of the Hayward Touring series at venues across the UK during 2013. Hicks’ work can be found in the collections of the Tate Gallery in London, the Hakone Open Air Museum in Kanagawa, Japan, and the Castle Museum in Norwich, Contemporary Art Society, Government Art Collection, and the National Museum of Wildlife Art, among many others. In 2023, Hicks was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Sculptors. Hicks lives and works in London.

"I see everything in terms of three dimensions. even the drawings, and I don't think it'd matter which I end up doing because it's almost the same exercise....the concern is the same.I think I might ultimately get frustrated if I can't make anything in the round; I love that magical feeling of having something evolve at your finger tips, that you are making something live that hasn't lived before."

- Nicola Hicks