As my train rolls into Kendal, I think about how, despite being a stone’s throw away, I’ve never visited before. I’m here now to see Thinking is Making, a group show of ten artists who have all been recipients of the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award (MTSA) in the past eleven years, spotlighting each individual artist and the richness of their practice, whilst bringing specific works into a wider dialogic space under the shared legacy of the MTSA. Each winner gets a solo show at the Standpoint Gallery in London, which then travels to Cross Lane Projects in Kendal. It feels fitting that Cross Lane Projects is home to such an exhibition given its position in the broader cultural and environmental landscape of the Lake District – a landscape which has historically served as celebrated artistic inspiration. Approaching Cross Lane Projects, the phrase ‘hidden gem’ comes to mind. Immediately, my interest is piqued by the unassuming facade accompanied by a single painted wall, adorned with brightly coloured dots. It is understated, humble, but effortlessly stylish. For Thinking is Making, the gallery’s largely bare walls function in the sculptures’ favour, allowing us to freeze in the moment and experience walking around these works, and exploring our relationship to them. Equally effective is the lack of written interpretation in the gallery space itself. I have typically bemoaned a lack of object labels and narrative text for its inaccessibility to the viewer, which I’d always presumed to be a lack of effort or willingness to facilitate understanding. However, done correctly, an approach of bare walls without the intervention of labels can be indicative of a renegotiation of agency back into the hands of the viewer, challenging us to make meaning for ourselves and trusting that we can, as opposed to being told what the pieces ‘mean’. In this way, the display style asserts the idea that there is no one correct way to interpret these pieces. In Thinking is Making, the visitor is invited to approach each piece on its own terms, engaging on an initially sensory level, with the subsequent optional context of the exhibition program’s contents.
One pristine white wall is hung with a constellation of lithograph prints to my left as I enter the space (a limited edition MTSA print run in collaboration with Paupers Press), with a rectangular archway to the right. The archway invites a glimpse into the main gallery space, which is filled with a delicious tension. My eyes feast upon an array of colours, mostly muted with some pops of brighter shades, as well as textures and positions. I am immediately drawn to Frances Richardson’s ‘And What of Your Soul? I’ (2022) cascading up a wall in the rightmost corner, resembling half-opened books. Feeling sufficiently teased I take an introductory walk amid the works, soaking up the feeling of being in the same space as them. As I stand in the centre of the gallery entrance, Iain Hales’ ‘Spolia Laetus’ (2024) and Rosie Edwards’ ‘Fountain’ (2024) greet me on either side. Both works are close to the floor, resting on plinths – the latter’s wooden, the former’s made by the artist himself as part of the piece, as Assistant Curator, Rebecca Larkin, later tells me. Larkin explains that most of these works have been created in the past year or so, especially for this group show. Each artist was given the same square footage within which to work, dictated by the dimensions of the room, thereby creating a challenge to see what they could do within these confines.
There exists a continuity from piece to piece, so I am surprised to learn that the artists did not frequently communicate with each other in either their creation or installation of their work. Taking Hales and Edwards as an example, their two bookending pieces complement each other nicely through their shared use of pastel colours and interest in capturing movement. Hales’ piece reads like a delightful Tetris puzzle, using layers and connecting forms to explore his central inquiry: ‘what would a painting made by a sculptor look like?’. Conversely, Edwards’ coiled pink tubes snaking around each other capture a moment of pause amid movement, speaking to the artist’s interest in tactility, resilience, and deconstructing the rigidity of seemingly fixed forms. Thus, the space feels imbued with a kinetic potential, as though some works desperately want to move, whilst others actually do move. Megan Broadmeadow’s ‘Putto’s Playtime’ (2024) has shards of broken grey columns made from plaster slowly rotating amid their suspension from the ceiling’s metal grid, a stark contrast to the tumultuous papier-mâché pink ball, prised open and oozing neon pink glitter, around which it spins. Dean Kenning’s ‘Untitled (Rubber Plants)’ (2023) consists of a series of rubbery tubelike branches secured to plinths of about a metre tall, which vigorously spring and thrust forwards and backwards upon approach. The result is hypnotic; I find myself watching the rubber move wildly, thrumming against the plinth, until the movement slows to an eventual halt.
The works before me are varied in form and scope but also each test, defy, and contort conventional understandings of what sculpture is by playing with the rigidity and evolution of forms within a given space. Likewise, it is interesting how much each piece’s installation is in itself a part of the work. Larkin gives the example of Lee Holden, whose installation of ‘Universal Bridge’ (2023), was performative and conversational – inviting onlookers to question what he was doing. In this way, it seems that each piece is just as much about what the viewer can see as what they cannot. Owing to the artists’ own merit and recognition under the MTSA prize, and the dialogic curation which facilitates the relationship between artist, viewer, and gallery space, the show as a whole is exemplary of sculpture’s potential in form, medium, and provocation. At several points, it strikes me that the works’ three dimensionality means that each can be viewed from multiple angles, each bringing with it new layers of understanding.
Take Steph Huang’s ‘Carpeting I -VI’ (2024) which opens the show. This series comprises six neatly arranged rectangles, precisely four by sixty-four by forty-two centimetres. A mild steel casing runs around the outside of the rectangle, which is itself composed of MDF, carpet, and paper. Displayed on the wall, as opposed to freestanding, these pieces combine ephemeral paper archives from the German transport industry with an overlay of carpet reminiscent of vehicle flooring. I want to reach out and touch the carpet, to run my fingers along the fibres, and at the same time I am inspecting the documents in the centre, building a network of keywords in my mind: German, transport, industry, production. These elements connect tangibly to processes of the carpet’s production, Huang’s crafting of these objects, and why she brought them together. I get the impression that Huang is inspired by questions brought up by her immediate surroundings – in this case, a residency in Germany – and works with materials that implicate the viewer in conversations around cycles of production and consumption. It is an interesting piece to open the show with – quiet and understated at a first glance, but full of questions and provocations if you allow yourself to sit with it. Opening with Huang’s piece is characteristic of the curation as a whole, in that it is considerably more conceptual and not as commanding of space as the other works, but I quickly realise that this is the point. Though I initially found this work difficult to access as a viewer and felt less familiar with the work as a sculptural form, there is beauty in how Huang has handcrafted every board with its metal casing; her work is meticulous and speaks broadly to her interests in production. In this way, Huang’s piece sets a precedent for the whole show, prompting the viewer to challenge themselves and stretch their idea of what sculpture is and can be.
Exploring further, I am struck by references to science fiction, the fantastical and surreal – the not here and not now. One of the most palpable examples of this is Anna Reading’s ‘The Egg’ (2024), depicting an ambiguous more-than-human being, made from an impressive collection of wood, stainless steel, aluminium, Jesmonite, sand, pigment, tile adhesive, oyster shell, volcanic sand, nassa shell, and ‘studio debris’. It stands in the centre of the room, 224 centimetres high, with two long, vertical planks forming the spine of the creature, connected to two horizontal planks resting on the floor. From this base comes a layer of colourful shards enmeshed in a white structure binding everything together, appearing like a residue building up on the creature slowly over time. Metal wires cascade from the base, too, with flower-like antennae reaching into negative space, claiming what they can. On one of the vertical planks, an egg-like structure extends outwards, bulbous and protruding. Metal sheets cut into coral-like shapes wrap around the spinal planks, extending outwards. While I take in layer after layer, I feel delightfully puzzled. In attempting to determine how and why Reading used these materials, the viewer is exposed to the versatility of the materials. The question is not just about how the artist has used them, but how should we? In constructing this creature with layers of protective armour, made from found objects and debris, Reading makes a statement about evolutionary resilience, survival and, saliently, waste. I can almost picture the formation of this hapless creature, building an outer layer of residue as it traverses a desolate landscape. Reading has managed to create an actual embodiment or characterisation of the possibilities of our built environment and our very real climate anxieties.
Standing behind ‘The Egg’ and peering through the gaps in its structure, Kate Lyddon’s ‘Lizard’ (2024) is visible. Also manifesting a kind of standing creature, but with an entirely different result. This work – made of glazed ceramic, copper pipe, polystyrene, cardboard, plywood, polyurethane and sand – explores a bodily form, but one that is decisively more anthropomorphic. A black plinth serves as a base from which two long chrome pipes extend upwards like a vertebral column, leading directly into a bust of a head which is as horrifying as it is mesmerising. The skull and neck are black and speckled, resembling basalt or something burnt. Tufts of black hair stand at the crown of the head, and the figure’s face seems brain-like in texture; shiny and ridged with the remnants of facial features melting off slowly, perhaps signifying a loss of identity. Moving down the figure, two sickly yellow growths are placed where one imagines the chest would be, calling to mind mammary glands. The skeletal piping is accompanied by a wave of grey coloured sand on the floor, both reminiscent of the Lizard Peninsula from which the work takes its name, and analogous to this creature’s blood, with a small pile of glazed ceramic body parts. ‘Lizard’ is visceral and dizzying, but also somehow amusing in its bewilderment. The exhibition program states that Lyddon likes to create such nonsensical forms because ‘they don’t have all the answers’ and indeed, weeks later I’m still ruminating on its questions. Cross Lane Projects are known for their dialogic curation and provocative subject matter (take the preceding exhibition, Small Boats and Family Matters), and it works very well in Thinking is Making. Each piece stands alone on its own merit, forming an intimate inquiry with the viewer, and then there is a larger synergy that emerges when considering the show as a cohesive whole, such as references to reuse and waste in the artists’ material choices, and fantastical sci-fi aesthetics manifested through kinetic creatures and enigmatic humanoids. Thinking is Making is a testament to sculpture as experiential, relational, and a way to process thoughts about the world around us. Most importantly, it teaches us that ambiguity is fun – and sometimes it’s better to have more questions than answers.
Amie Kirby is a producer, researcher and writer based in Manchester.
Thinking is Making continues as Cross Lane Projects until 21 September.
The Mark Tanner Sculpture Award is hosted by Standpoint.
This review is supported by Cross Lane Projects.
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Published 20.08.2024 by Lauren Velvick in Reviews
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