There’s a gem of an exhibition at the Winchester Discovery
Centre, called The Figure in the Landscape. It brings together works by
sculptors who are all responding to the landscape, and shaping their responses
through different materials methods. One striking feature of the show is how individually each artist
responds to the land and its elements. For Barbara Hepworth, ideas of community
are essential: the dolmens of Cornwall evoke individuals, linking culture
across time; and the landscape itself is a palimpsest of human communities, a
place where land, mind and spirit are integrated. Henry Moore, represented here
by a small reclining figure, turns figures into landscapes: we seem to catch the
human form as it is shifting through some metamorphic process into the contours
of mountains and hills. Some artists are drawn to the pure forms and geometric
patterns of the land: Tim Harrisson captures concentric ripples in marble in
Double Vision, while Peter Randall-Page’s Entomology II arranges ceramic shapes
in a symmetrical leafy pattern, like a picture of the fractal series underlying natural phenomena. Charlotte Mayer and Lotte Glob respond to
seismic forces and the rough textures of the earth in their work, which
somehow imbues inert matter with a feeling of potent force and the character carved into it over great passages of
time.
Sculptures are not only finished products, They also tell a
story of a process which, when we know about it, becomes part of our
apprehension of the work. Keith Rand’s abstract constructions are the end
result of walking, absorbing and exploring the downlands of Salisbuy plain,
while Chris Drury – represented here by a video of an iceberg – is another
walker, whose work offers traces of journeys, captured in different media. Simple
images can have multiple resonances: Roger Stephens’s Shore, made up of three
marble forms, irresistibly suggests a group – a family – looking expectantly …
where? Out to sea, or from sea to land? Or from past to present? From one work
to another we become conscious of the quality of the different materials –
marble, chalk, bronze – and their suggestive,
expressive qualities. In the synthetic world of the modern city, it is
refreshing to have an exhibition like this to bring us, so to speak, back to earth. The Figure in the Landscape is curated by Rachel Bebb of The Garden Gallery, Broughton.
