Press Release: The Hepworth announces new collaboration for Spring 2013

[Jan McNulty]

THE HEPWORTH WAKEFIELD ANNOUNCES NEW CREATIVE

COLLABORATION FOR SPRING 2013 EXHIBITION

 

 

 

PAM HOGG, KENNETH TINDALL (Northern Ballet) AND STUART MCCALLUM COLLABORATE ON THE ULTIMATE FORM, A DYNAMIC ‘LIVING COLLAGE’ OF ART FORMS BY ARTIST LINDER STERLING, PART OF HER FORTHCOMING EXHIBITION AT THE HEPWORTH WAKEFIELD

 

 

 

· Artist Linder Sterling presents a new, dynamic performance work entitled The Ultimate Form, a fusion of dance, music, fashion, art, sculpture and landscape

 

 

 

· Includes collaborations with Northern Ballet’s award-winning choreographer Kenneth Tindall, British fashion designer Pam Hogg, who will be designing for dance and for men for the first time, and a musical score by Cinematic Orchestra guitarist Stuart McCallum

 

 

 

· The Ultimate Form premieres at The Hepworth Wakefield on Saturday 11 May 2013 with a short preview to be shown at Linder’s retrospective at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris in January 2013,

 

 

 

· Linder’s Stringed Figure (Octobass for the 21st Century) (Version I), one of only four octobasses in the world and winner of the Latitude Contemporary Art (LCA) Award and Exhibition 2012, will feature in The Ultimate Form

 

Linder Sterling (b. 1954, Liverpool, UK) has been working with the principles of collage for over three decades: from her two-dimensional work on the late 1970s iconic Buzzcocks posters and record sleeves, to more recent collages presented in light-boxes.

 

Her exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield (16 February - 12 May 2013) will feature collage and three-dimensional light-box sculptures. The exhibition will culminate in a major new performance piece entitled The Ultimate Form on Saturday 11 May 2013 that will bring together multiple collaborators and participants “to develop a creative Esperanto”.

 

Linder explained: “The legacy of Barbara Hepworth will provides the discrete pulse for this new work It feels vitally important at this point in my life to loop back to the generation before my own, to British female artists in particular and to bring to consciousness and exp

ression the unexamined aspects of their work. '

 

Key collaborators include: British fashion designer Pam Hogg; Northern Ballet’s award-winning choreographer Kenneth Tindall; Stuart McCallum of Cinematic Orchestra; Wakefield City Soul Club and South Asian Arts UK.

 

Pam Hogg, fashion designer said: “I'd been waiting for years for someone to invite me to design costumes for a ballet. I feel my work screams movement and was knocked out when Linder approached me. I'd never met her before but knew her by her iconic Buzzcocks single sleeve for Orgasm Addict which I still treasure. When I discovered that the name of her project was The Ultimate Form and that Barbara Hepworth was her inspiration it was all the more potent as I've huge respect for Hepworth and her work and in my most recent collections I've been creating shapes beyond the human form giving my extended silhouettes a soft sculptural element, so I feel that this is the perfect ballet for me and the one well worth waiting for.”

 

Kenneth Tindall, Northern Ballet Choreographer added: “Working with Linder, Pam and Stewart on The Ultimate Form has been a phenomenal experience for me. It has challenged me as a choreographer and taken me outside my own comfort zone. We have created something that I think is truly unique and very hypnotic. I hope the result of this collaboration will intrigue people and leave them feeling that they have been part of something that is wholly original.”

 

These elements are all derived from research into Barbara Hepworth over the past three years. Linder re-encountered the work of Hepworth while participating in The Dark Monarch exhibition at Tate St Ives in 2009 and has pursued this in relation to both Hepworth’s sculpture and the tenacious conceptualisation of Hepworth’s artistic identity. The research conducted has resulted in significant areas of interest: the use of strings in sculpture and music; the importance of dance to Hepworth who practiced ballroom dancing and whose final studio was in an old dance hall: and the use of sound - sculpture as a form of ventriloquism for Hepworth and in performance through producing noise to be experienced somatically. Each of the collaborators, performers and participants has been approached because of their specific relation to, or existing interest in, these key themes.

 

Spring 2013 (16 February – 12 May 2013) sees The Hepworth Wakefield present three separate, but linked, exhibitions by artists Alice Channer, Jessica Jackson Hutchins and Linder. All three artists have engaged with and referred to the legacy of Barbara Hepworth as part of the process of making new works for their exhibitions at the gallery. Light-boxes, collage, sculptures made from everyday objects and ambitious installations are among the diverse practices employed by each artist to explore various representations of the human body.

 

For more on The Hepworth Wakefield visit

www.hepworthwakefield.org or call 01924 247360.

 

ENDS

 

 

DATES FOR YOUR DIARY:

 

 

· World premiere of The Ultimate Form on Saturday 11 May at The Hepworth Wakefield

 

 

 

· Spring 2013: Alice Channer, Jessica Jackson Hutchins and Linder opens Saturday 16 February until Sunday 12 May 2013

 

 

 

·

[Jan McNulty]

I was lucky enough to see a short preview of The Ultimate Form at NB's Headquarters in Leeds yesterday.

 

Linder Sterling gave a short talk about how she has taken inspiration from Barbara Hepworth and, for this work, Hepworth's monumental sculptures The Family of Man. We were then treated to 3 excerpts from the work - a trio for ladies (The Matriarchs), a duet for The Bride and Groom and a duet for Youth, that became a trio.

 

The costumes were amazing - unitards in earthy colours for the girls and black for the boys. The unitards included hoods that had some form of head-dress underneath, giving the impression of very highly domed heads. Kenneth Tindall's choreography is languid and sensuous, with the dancers entwining in various combinations. The music was hypnotic and the movements were very much enhanced by it.

 

I think it will look absolutely stunning in the context of The Hepworth galleries. I hope the work will also be more widely seen.