Sheila Hicks - Photo Alison Jacques Gallery
On
a bright sunny day I viewed the exhibition by Sheila Hicks at the Alison
Jacques Gallery, entitled Stones of Peace. This includes a variety of her works,
with large sculptural pieces that go beyond textile to inhabit the installation
realm. They are imposing, soft, colourful sculptures that hang down from the
ceiling, resembling loose ponytails, see pic. below - if you touch them they move. There is
movement in this specific type of work, unlike her minimalist work on the walls,
they change every time they are installed in a new exhibition space. Opposite
on the floor are large balls of colourful intertwined yarns, more of a rough nature,
made with synthetic yarns. Some of her work is made with handlooms.
Sheila Hicks - Photo Alison Jacques Gallery
On the
walls of the gallery are her minimalist works; they are white and go towards
paintings, they are more controlled due to being just one colour and wrapped on
hard material, all of them are made with soft textile materials, some natural,
some synthetic and what joins them together is the repetition of wrapping the
material; it’s a very meditative way of working, spending time intertwining and
wrapping see pic. below.
Sheila Hicks - Photo Alison Jacques Gallery
In the more colourful works there is playfulness, while in the white
minimalist works there is instead calmness, a stillness. The soft materials and
the way in which they are shown in the gallery make you want to touch them,
they are tactile, large and small but when they are intertwined with each other
as in the balls on the floor they gain in volume, because they are also amassed
together in a way you would want to sit on them and play with them. This is
also due to the bright colours they are made of and the soft texture. I really
felt the urge to pounce on them, but I refrained as I was aware I was not
allowed; it would be great if they actually allowed people to jump on them and
play with them, take the whole thing further, fill the whole room with them and
allow people to just have fun, they tried this in another exhibition. At the moment you can look but you can’t touch
or play with them so they sit in between, a sculpture, installation and
textile, see pic. below.
Sheila Hicks - Photo Alison Jacques Gallery
The way she threads them also makes you reconsider what textile in the
past was used for, but she shows the unlimited potential of the material,
taking it into a new realm altogether, moving textile forward into new
directions.
In
the second room are her ‘Minimes’, small weavings which are made with a hand
loom, which she has been doing for the past 50 years. They are intimate pieces
with feathers, porcupine needles, shells, paper, or bamboo or even steel
fibres, sensitively added on to the piece and not overpowering the work but complementing
it. Some are more brown in tone than her other more colourful works in the main
room. Due to the small scale of these works, they draw you in like you would
find looking at miniature work, so you have to go close up to them to get a
proper feel for them. Some say it reminds them of the paintings of Italian
artist Giorgio Morandi, see pic. below.
Sheila Hicks - Photo Alison Jacques Gallery
Some of her initial work was based on pre Columbian
weaving structures while from 2005 she started using synthetic filaments, which
the balls also called boules are made of. All the work in this exhibition was presented indoors; I
think next time I would love to see her outdoor works.
Sheila
Hicks in an interview with Arnet Magazine said: Textile had been relegated to a
secondary role in our society, to a material that was considered either
functional or decorative. I wanted to
give it another status and show what an artist can do with these incredible
materials.
This
was a very enjoyable and stimulating exhibition.
Hicks
has a BFA and MFA from Yale University and studied under Joseph Albers, and Eva
Hesse was a fellow student.
No comments:
Post a Comment