Alison Wilding RA: A Sculptor in Lockdown
Alison Wilding RA, Tooth & Claw (2014) on show at The Heong Gallery, Downing College as part of WE ARE HERE: Women in Art at Cambridge Colleges. ‘A meditation on impermanence’
The vast majority of us have had to significantly shake up our routines over the past few months. Removing ourselves from our typical workplace has been a challenge and has been no different for many artists. As a sculptor, an installation often requires access to a team of people and large studio spaces for construction - elements which have had to be forfeited for the time being for many.
Alison Wilding RA, like many, has been forced to temporarily adapt her creative output and perspective, turning to the medium of drawing. Producing works on paper is not a new practice for the London-based artist who has admitted her ‘freedom’ in drawing. Speaking recently in an interview with Heong Gallery Curator Prerona Prasad, Wilding notes:
I understand that [the drawings] have quite a lot in common with my sculpture in terms of the decisions I make…
The thing I like about drawings is that they can float. You don’t think about gravity. They do something really different. That is the freedom and pleasure of drawing for me. You are not weighed down by the material world in the same way. So, maybe, they are more imaginative.
As Eranda Professor of Drawing at the RA Schools and with her rich portfolio of drawings, Wilding can be described as a sculptor who loses nothing from this alteration in medium. Strong forms are found in both her sculpture and works on paper, the shapes and marks are somewhat mimicked in a cross-dimensional visual language. Despite cancelled shows and a stunted sculptural output, Wilding displays what can be produced in these states of limbo.
With curving movements of varying solidity and transparency, the three-dimensional quality of her sculptural practice is translated in Phaethon, a screenprint produced using a combination of painted washes and knife-cut masking film.
The print is an edition of 30 of which copies are available for sale at £3,000 inc VAT and shipping within the U.K. For shipping outside the U.K., please contact the Studio at info@theprintstudio.co.uk
Click here to read a full blog post feature on this print
Posted by Karina Sawyer, *with permission from P. Prasad.