- Venue
- Fitzwilliam Museum
- Location
- East England
Despite the inevitable and logical return to considering issues of place and site in the latter half of last Century, I still keep coming over sculpture that seems plonked rather than placed. A sense of the plonked somewhat pervaded the last two Sculpture on the promenade shows. Both included strong work, but at times the pieces jarred with their setting. And I use the word jarred rather than juxtaposed quite particularly. For when there is an effective sense of counterpoint or juxtaposition the richness of the mix is semantically charged and potent. When something jars with its context the results veer towards the conceptually clunky and awkward.
Enter the Fitzwilliam’s current Director Dr Timothy Potts, Still relatively fresh in this role, he has already given the programme inside the Museum an invigorating shake up. This year he has put energy into the outside by taking on the curatorship of the promenade. And boy can you tell the difference. The first change is the number of artists, which has been dropped down to three, all of them represented substantially. The second change is the nature of the work, linked by clear threads on the road to abstraction. The third and for me most important change is that of the site sensitive placement of the works. Timothy Potts has choreographed this placement with consummate spatial intelligence and elegance.
This aspect of placement is arguably critical across art forms, if work is to stand any chance of being noticed against the interference of a busy world. However within sculpture I would suggest it is even more so. Placement of shape, mark and form within the works themselves is fundamental to one’s engagement with the sculptures close up. Placement within their environment is critical to their sense of being in the world full stop. In order for dialogue to occur recognition needs to take place between object and viewer. Recognition, not understanding. I believe that placement is the ingredient that enables this recognition to form.
So on to the artists and the works. My first encounter is with a tumbled arrangement of Peter Randall Page carvings. These amorphous organically inspired stone forms sit like curious oversized seedpods, occupying an enticing conceptual territory that seems familiar, alluding to the idea of representative form whilst resisting interpretative closure in the sense of a specific referent. They sit comfortably on the grass and against the structure of the building. Climbing up the main steps is a delightful undulating white form with immaculate rounded bumps spread equally over its form. Visually it suggests to be perfectly hewn from white marble but on tapping reveals its hollow cast bronze form. I love it when bronze hides its historic baggage and loses all that status/history/commodity presence as for me its use can so often be problematic.
Next up is Helaine Blumenfeld. In sculptural terms she is a master at transforming benign matter is sensual fluid forms. Her catharsis of bronze and marble into animated, twisting and delicately layered shapes and structure is wholly impressive. They are closer on the trajectory towards narrative than Randall Page’s and this is in part due to the strong referents to the human form and plant world, like other contemporaries working with classic materials, there are clear references to sculpture past, but there is a clear departure between referencing and replication and Blumenfeld is on the right side of the fence. Her work acknowledges the continuum without being limited by days gone by. These fluid forms work well against the grounds and building.
The third artist Kan Yasuda is from Japan and the impact of this of his aesthetic choices is unsurprisingly wholly evident. Simple, reduced and calming to the eye. His large bronze stands like a rectangular inverted W form and frames the location delightfully. His low level smooth marble forms sit like oversized pebbles. They remind me of the meticulously placed pebbles at the Kettles Yard House. They are sublime and arguably both the least accessible in terms of interpretation but the most accessible in terms of interaction.
Due to their place and also due to their physical accessibility these are being crawled all over by a School party as I visit. This is a refreshing change from some of the more uptight art in the open venues I have visited over the years. I sit and eat amongst the art, without guilt or retribution. Sculpture outside becomes part of the real world and as such demands interaction. I’m not convinced the crawling Junior School kids necessarily gave much thought to the work as ‘work’, or got too bogged down in the interpretative agenda per se. But I am pretty sure that in some way, their affirmation of life was given a positive nudge by theses atypical interventions into an otherwise potentially austere context. And if the very least sculpture can do is encourage more being, rather than watching in the world, then that alone is a damn fine thing, personally I got much, much more.
