ARTS
Sculpture amidst the spires
Salisbury is the setting for an ambitious exhibition. Andrew Lambirth takes a look The city of Salisbury is currently playing host to a highly ambitious exhibition (until 19 August) which aspires to provide an adequate survey of 20th-century British sculpture. A worthy initiative, but when did a group show of this nature ever succeed in its aim? Modern British sculpture didn't really get going until the 1930s, and had no public profile to speak of (leaving aside the Epstein controversy) until after the second world war. And there's very little on show in Salisbury to represent 1900-1950. In fact, although at the planning stage I gather it was intended to include something by the late Victorian sculptor Hamo Thornycroft (1850-1925) — and if him then why not the master of 'Eros', Alfred Gilbert? — Thomycroft eventually had to be left out of the exhibition. As a consequence, the earli- est work on display is an unhandy mother and child in Portland stone by Eric Gill from 1910, closely followed by Gaudier- Brzeska's strangely hierophantic 1912 `Madonna'. Aside from a Moore and a Nicholson, and a couple of 1940s Epstein busts, everything else dates from the sec- ond half of the century. Can this be said to provide a balanced view?
Of course, every exhibition is dependent on the loans that are available, but this dis- play seems to be rather over-reliant on the Arts Council's collection. Perhaps this has something to do with the nature of the venue — aside from the Cathedral precincts, sculptures are dotted around the city and sited in parks and open spaces. They are thus vulnerable to public atten- tion (not all of it welcome) and not every owner is prepared to lend in these circum- stances. Even those placed within the Cathedral Close seemed destined to become unorthodox climbing frames for children, and, in the case of Anish Kapoor's untitled marble void, an unusual- ly cool love-seat. (A refreshingly utilitarian purpose for a work usually praised for its transcendent spiritual qualities.) One of the more praiseworthy intentions of the Shape of the Century is to place sculpture 'in the midst of daily life making use of the theatricality offered by spaces with their own layers of meaning. Each work is sited to confound expectations and to make the viewer look again.' So writes the director of the Salisbury Festival, Helen Marriage. She is presumably refer- ring in particular to siting secular works in a religious context. And the Dean of Salis- bury Cathedral optimistically concurs: 'Just as our familiar settings may enrich these sculptures, so also they may unlock our space and our eyes to aspects previously unseen.' Well, sometimes it happens.
Take, for instance, the splendid vertical sculpture by Nigel Hall called 'The Here, The Now', which hangs directly beneath the spire, inside the Cathedral, at the cross- ing. It consists of a glimmering round- ended aluminium rod, graded in sections like the polished telescopic leg of an immense tripod. This elegant suspended form says all sorts of things about the verti- cality of the Gothic architecture within which it is placed, chiming visually with the soaring columns, and echoing in particular the nearby organ pipes in the choir. Hall also intended his sculpture to remind us of our own vertical balance, and for it to draw the viewer in imagination to the centre of the earth, whose magnetic pull holds it firmly in place.
To my mind, Hall's piece is an inspired choice and a brilliant siting. But it's per- haps not so easy to understand for the gen- Heaven's Gate; 199D, by Tim Harrisson eral public. 'Decoration' was the answer I heard a verger give a child who asked what it was, while an adult asking what an alu- minium pole was doing in the Cathedral was greeted with the sarcastic response: `Good question.' Do I detect a resentment for this temporary installation of sculpture among the Cathedral's staff? Or just igno- rance? Surely it is the responsibility of the exhibition's organisers to ensure that those who have to answer the public's queries are fully briefed? Perhaps there is a need for information panels to explain the more dif- ficult pieces or to provide an indication of how the artist might have arrived at a work. Nigel Hall's sculpture would certainly have benefited.
Other sculptures seemed to have their own resident explicators. The ladies chap- eroning Antony Gormley's 'Field for the British Isles', a universally popular installa- tion of tiny terracotta figures placed like a carpet on the floor of a section of the clois- ters, were hearteningly well informed. Curiously, however, someone had hung a sign which read '(One or two of them are only mildly anxious)', as if viewers were in need of reassurance as to the mood or intentions of these tiny ghoulish figures. Sadly no such message accompanied the disgracefully kitsch sentimentality of Sophie Ryder's twisted wire 'Minotaur with Hare' parked nearby.
Salisbury Cathedral is potentially an awe- inspiring and enlivening backdrop for any sculpture. Yet some of the objects sited within it looked lost. Robert Adams's beau- tiful 'Apocalyptic Figure', sparingly fash- ioned from ash, tended to melt into the serried ranks of wooden chairs behind it. I almost missed Rachel Whiteread's resin blocks which seemed to merge with the paving stones. In contrast William Tucker's `Thebes' presented a vulgar tripartite blast of colour which was totally out of place. Much more fitting was Barry Flanagan's suitably faded heap of sand-filled hessian sausages.
But hang on a second — sausages in a cathedral? Are you sure? Well, this is the big problem with public sculpture, wherev- er it is sited and whoever has made it you simply can't please everybody. For instance, there's a fractured self-portrait figure by Paolozzi on a ground-floor office façade in Holborn. When it was first installed, some wag wrote in the builders' dust cloaking its feet 'Take Me Away'. Talking of Paolozzi, the rather intimidating sculpture which represents him at Salisbury looks like nothing so much as one of those suspended mediaeval cages in which unlucky prisoners were incarcerated until death. Is that appropriate? And, again, is Cathy de Monchaux's sculpture, all blatant bondage and overt sexuality, a fitting adornment of the Chapter House? I ask these questions in no spirit of moralistic indignation, but merely because they need to be raised.
There is very little first-rate public sculp- ture in this country, though increasing sums of money are being spent on commission- ing third- or fourth-rate artists. The task of such exhibitions as Salisbury's is to show the very best of which the British are capa- ble. How then to justify the inclusion of Michael Ayrton and Geoffrey Dashwood in this selection? There will always be dis- putes about the choice of artists, but I can- not resist recording some — at least to me — notable omissions. The rather substan- tial gaps in the coverage of the earlier part of the century could have been at least par- tially filled with examples of work by Frank Dobson and Leon Underwood. Of later artists, I was much surprised to see nothing by George Fullard (19234973), who is at last receiving a modicum of critical acclaim. And where are Bryan Kneale, Richard Deacon, Dhruva Mistry? Still, it was good to see younger sculptors like Charles Had- cock and Tim Harrisson showing with more established names. And Shirazeh Houshiary's hexagonal gold-leaf and lead tower, a metaphoric link between earth and sky, body and spirit, was very moving. A partial testament, then, this show, but a thoroughly enjoyable day out in search of sculpture.
A version of the Salisbury exhibition comes to Canary Wharf on 6 September until 24 October.
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