Page 45 - Studio International - February 1968

with any radical talent cannot live from the sale of David Hall, one of the sculptors represented at the format is unusual within the present framework
their work in England, or from its totally inade- Whitechapel, is also exhibiting at the ROYAL of English sculpture and relates perhaps to the
quate public use. England cannot support its INSTITUTE GALLERIES together with Gerard Hems- need for `recomplication' which has been felt and
artists. It is tempting to believe, as I do, that a worth, another sculptor, Stan Peskett a painter, expressed recently by some painters on both sides
generally expanded and re-orientated national and Andrew Dunlop, whose modern fetiches of the Atlantic. It is this which divides Hems-
education would make their support feasible, but employ light and movement. David Hall has the worth's work, in style, from the works of other
until its effects are felt there will be a wasteful lion's share in terms of floor space and the floor is artists which it most closely resembles, (and I
hiatus, as serious for England in the visual arts as indeed the area upon which his sculptures operate. think particularly of Tucker). I find that Hems-
in science. There are clear signs of our artists The angle of the spectator's vision, and the area worth's sculptures involve me in the recreation of
following the scientists in the move to emigration. between his feet and his horizon, as they change, personal and absorbing situations. While he is
There is practically no time left in which to reform change the perception of shapes lying just off the indeed using like and sometimes ready-made units,
the situation. . . . Education is indeed the only ground, which are themselves not quite the true Hemsworth employs in the making of his sculp-
remedy for ignorance, and this is what affects us rectangles or rhomboids they seem to be. There is tures and the differentiation of shapes, surfaces
more than anything: a lack of awareness, a failure much to be learned from these works about shape and colours, a quality which is best described as
to search out and uphold standards, with the perception and the importance of viewing angles, sensibility—and that word, I bet, would raise the
underlying destructive notion that art is a luxury but the sharp intelligence at work in their compos- hackels on Mr Fried.
and a dispensable embellishment of life. Art in ing is not, it seems to me, working to any really
reality is the most direct and potent expression of sculptural purpose. If illusion is the means, there * As this sculpture is due to be exhibited in Venice,
the human spirit.' Once again, it's all a question of still has to be an end. (If the comparison between a photographs will be published nearer the time. Those
priorities; and it is very cheering to find the sculpture and a painting is justified, have a look at who will be unable to visit the Biennale can get a good
director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery stating so how Bridget Riley uses illusion to create a situation idea from Nile and from Bridget Riley's Breathe, in the
publicly and so forcefully the priority of art. which works as a painting while also recreating same exhibition, of the strength of the British contingent.
Not all the sculptures in the Leicestershire very particular states of mind or emotion.)
collection are of high quality, but there are few Gerard Hemsworth's sculptures in the same
without something to offer children in the schools exhibition highlight one of the differences in ap-
where many of them are housed. The collection proach between English and American artists and
makes for a most stimulating exhibition, colourful, critics. An American sculptor using a combination
inviting and in some cases very strong. Derrick of the same or similar elements would be labelled
Woodham's Three painted metal boxes with its dark nowadays as Minimal, with all that entails in
shaded colours is a serious and imposing sculp- terms of feeling about scale, materials, and
ture. Brian Wall's Two discs is one of his best pieces. accessibility. The description is quite irrelevant, I
The dignity of works like these tends to expose the think, to Hemsworth's sculptures. They are very far
more ritzy, arted-up pieces like the three Bryan from cool. There is intense preoccupation in these
Kneales or the drawing-room sculptures by Dennis works with different qualities of edge, with rela-
Mitchell and Alfred Dunn, but even these latter tionships of colour and with angle and juxta- Above
acquisitions are enterprising by the standards set position. The combination of such particular, Gerard Hemsworth Minerva 1967
by most comparable patrons. subtle interplays with a broad and open sculptural painted plastic, 32 x 96 x 174 in.