A sculpture can do what a ruler can not
Courtauld Institute of Art Sculptural Processes Group’s Annual Artist’s Talk, 2022.
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Taking her recent exhibition ‘if I measure it must exist’ as starting point, artist Frances Richardson will discuss the relevance of thinking through process and materials in her work. Richardson will introduce her work via three works by Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns and Giotto to explore how idea, image, and object inform her practice.
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FRANCES RICHARDSON (and Virginia Woolf)
November 12, 2020
Frances Richardson selects two short texts by Virginia Woolf - 'The Mark on the Wall' published in 1917 and 'Solid Objects' in 1918. Both begin with a black dot which becomes a jumping off point for musing about the structures and systems which govern our livelihoods. The first text has the narrator enjoying their own wondering about the identity of the mark on the wall, pulling away from the dreariness of logical thinking, championing instead, the inventiveness and possibilities in imaginative thinking. While the second text revolves around two politicians, one of whom finds a piece of smoothed glass at the seaside. He becomes obsessed with observation and collecting, giving up his political aspirations for a more materially intimate life - what an excellent idea for many of that lot !
Thinking is Making: Objects in a Space
Edited by Emma Benyon and Michael Taylor Sept 2023
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'Thinking is Making: Objects in a Space’ assembles voices of leading figures of contemporary British sculpture as they examine the relationship between the object and its maker within this mediated field. Dr. Jon Wood traces the influence of sculptures and sculptors who have defined the form in recent decades. An illustrated conversation between the award’s winners from 2013 to 2023 illuminates the development of diverse sculptural practices, locating sculpture in a space defined by both volumes of creativity and a dearth of access. And finally, a roundtable discussion between judges Lisa Le Feuvre, Phyllida Barlow, Hew Locke and Mike Nelson speculates on the future of the award, now entering its third decade, as it asks: Who are sculptors today? And what will they make?
Hardback, 28 × 23 cm | 11 × 9 in, 208 pages
ISBN 978-1-912165-46-9
About the Search: A Conversation with Frances Richardson
British sculptor Frances Richardson, 2017 recipient of the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award, endows utilitarian materials such as Perspex and wood veneer with unexpected lyricism and elemental force. Her Tanner Award show, “Not even nothing can be free of ghosts” (at Standpoint Gallery in London, then Cross Lane Projects in Kendal, northern England), gave full rein to her poetic sensibilities as material, form, and content engaged in a bewitching interplay of doubles and reflections between pieces and sometimes within one work. Loosely based on the theme of water as a metaphor for the state of perpetual searching, the exhibition marked a departure in approach for Richardson, breaching her self-imposed mandate to use materials with “no history” and exploring a conspicuously intimate scale in relation to her 2006–13 series of monumental MDF I-beams that forcefully dictated movement through space.
Ideas in the Making: Drawing Structure
Three-dimensional drawing - Jeremy Cooper
Inside the image - Frances Richardson in conversation with Luce Garrigues
Softback, 48 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9562539-2-7
Not even nothing can be free of ghosts
Solo exhibition catalogue - Mark Tanner Sculpture Award, Standpoint Gallery, London
text:
Frances Richardson in conversation with Javier Pes and Luce Garrigues
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Cross Lane Projects
Kendal, Cumbria
Vitamin D: New Perspectives in Drawing
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Published by Phaidon Press, 2005
ISBN 13: 978-0-714845456
50 Women Sculptors
by Joanna Sperryn-Jones (Author), Melissa Hamnett (Author), Cheryl Robson (editor) (Author), Cheryl Robson (Editor)
Published by Aurora Metro Books 2020
ISBN 13: 978-0993220777
The Art Of Drawing: British Masters and Methods since 1600
The Art of Drawing is the first book in sixty years to cover the wider history of drawing in Britain exploring the crucial role drawing has played in British art. Featuring works by foremost British artists from the early seventeenth century right up to the present day, this book offers fresh insights into the wide range of ways in which these artists have used drawing to think on paper, build up ideas and make finished exhibition pieces.
Published by V&A 2013
ISBN 13: 978-1851777587
In Between the Lines: Recent British Drawings
by Jeremy Cooper (Author), Catherine Lampert (Author)
Well-illustrated catalogue published to accompany an exhibition, 25 June - 10 July 2009. Useful survey of drawing practices in contemporary British art. Includes texts by Jeremy Cooper and Catherine Lampert.
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Published by Trinity Contemporary 2009
ISBN 13: 978-0956253903
Measure, Gesture, Form: Modern and Contemporary Drawings from a Private Donor
Portland Art Museum
1219 SW Park Avenue
Portland, OR 97205, USA
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Measure, Gesture, Form features a selection of American and European drawings—made with graphite, brush and ink, charcoal, and mixed media—dating from 1958 to 2008. The show highlights the use of grids and seriality in work by Sean Scully, Joe Goode, and Brice Marden; rich explorations of form by Bruce Conner and Christopher Wool; gestural drawings by sculptors David Smith and Anthony Caro; and figurative work by Martha Alf and Lucien Freud, among others.
Making Art in Africa: 1960-2010
...gives voice to various artist’s experiences and recalls the work of the Triangle Network that was first thriving in the 1980s
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Published by Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd. 2014
ISBN 13: 978-1848221512
