Contemporary concerns
It seems a long time since I trekked my way from Cambridge up to Nottingham in preparation for my lecture at Nottingham Contemporary in 2011. But, I was reminded of how impressed I was with this example of the new breed of British contemporary art galleries when I finally made it to The Hepworth Wakefield today. It’s a winter wonderland up in Yorkshire this week, so I was more than a little excited to get out of the house and see some art. The Hepworth did not disappoint, its David Chipperfield building is both eye-catching and beautifully designed, comprising excellent facilities and brilliant gallery spaces. It sits well in the harsh industrial environment around it.
Two aspects of the Hepworth appealed to me particularly today as they draw on questions of modern interpretation practice about which I have been thinking recently. Readers of this blog will know that I am no fan of the usual museum audio-guide, but I am, nonetheless, well aware of the possibilities which such hand-held digital devices offer in varying interpretation, especially in unusual museum spaces. I’m excited, for instance, to hear how Kettle’s Yard will use them in their project ‘The New Museum as Interface.' They could do worse than learn from the Hepworth’s current show of work by Linder Sterling. This includes an installation of lightbox photocollages, combining images of dancers with brightly-coloured natural history images. They’re arresting in themselves, but mesmerising when combined with the soundtrack (that you can pick up on wireless headphones), which combines birdsong with the sound of bronze being hammered, and with snippets of an interview with Barbara Hepworth. It makes the installation a completely immersive space while also linking it out into the permanent galleries about Hepworth herself.
These permanent galleries likewise do an excellent job of making Barbara Hepworth’s works relevant to the Wakefield area, both interpretively, and through the beautifully curated relationships of the sculptures, paintings and maquettes on display out into the surrounding views which the Hepworth building so nicely frames. One gallery deals with ‘Hepworth at Work’, combining archival material, models, tools, short films and Hepworth’s own object collection to give a vibrant picture of the artist at work. I’ve written on here before about how we think about and represent the artist’s studio. There’s something compelling yet intensely sad about studios like Eduardo Paolozzi’s at National Galleries of Scotland or Constantin Brancusi’s at the Pompidou in Paris, which have been frozen entire as if the artist has just stepped out. Somehow that always makes me all the more aware that they have not, that the studio is idle. The Hepworth, by contrast, have framed their gallery more like a study collection – both for us to study, and like Hepworth’s own study – where the films, quotations and drawers of additional material make the room vibrant, and the narrative of artistic development is mixed with information on casting techniques.
If galleries like the Hepworth can continue to deal with these contemporary concerns in curating with such style and sensitivity, they won't be concerns for much longer.