Sculpture by Barbara Hepworth of two gold discs, one overlapping the other — Barbara Hepworth, Discs in Echelon, 1964

Phantom Sculpture (2023)

Posted

Thursday 9 May 2024

For our autumn and winter 2023-2024, the Mead Gallery showcased the work of 23 artists who have contributed to and shaped the development of British sculpture over the last century.

Exhibition dates: 6 October 2023 – 10 March

Britain has been home to some of the world’s most renowned sculptors – from Barbara Hepworth to Anthony Caro and Mona Hatoum.

Our understanding of modern and contemporary sculpture has largely been asserted through successive generations—each add to and develop our knowledge and appreciation of what sculpture is and can be.

Titled Phantom Sculpture, this exhibition took as its starting point the writing of former University of Warwick student and world-renowned cultural theorist, philosopher, and academic Mark Fisher (1968 – 2017). Fisher proposed:

“… the 21st century is oppressed by a crushing sense of finitude and exhaustion. It doesn’t feel like the future. Or, alternatively, it doesn’t feel as if the 21st century has started yet. We remain trapped in the 20th century.”

- Mark Fisher: Ghosts Of My Life - Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. Zero Books (2013)

With this quote in mind, Phantom Sculpture suggested that history is under constant reappraisal, none more so than by artists working today.

The artists included in the exhibition mine their own histories as well as interrogating those that have been widely accepted.

They create space where it was previously lacking to allow for new and emerging ideas to generate ghosts, traces and phantoms of one artist’s practice in another.

In January, the work of some artists present at the start was replaced by different artists and new sculptures, creating a kaleidoscope of further synergies connecting artists and their work across boundaries and generations.

This exhibition was supported by the Ampersand Foundation.