Almost half a century after her death, the prolific British artist, whose ‘holes’ in sculptures changed abstract art, has her first major exhibition in Australia
There’s a reverent kind of hush at Melbourne’s Heide Museum of Modern Art. Between the grey walls, Barbara Hepworth’s modernist sculptures are artfully arranged. Attenders wind their way through the maze, backdropped by black and white photographs of Hepworth at work. Occasionally, a comment will cut through the silence. Hepworth’s famous stringed sculptures, one woman observes to her friend, cast shadows on the walls, but in the shadows, only the “eye” is visible – the strings disappear. What is seen in the physical space, and what is seen as silhouette, are two separate forms.
Co-curators Lesley Harding and Kendrah Morgan travelled to the UK in 2018 to begin the process of putting In Equilibrium together. It’s the first time Hepworth’s work has been shown in a major exhibition in Australia, and includes more than 40 works from national, international and private collections – a fraction of the 600-odd sculptures in the prolific late British artist’s oeuvre.
