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In the Hepworth Project, I have created a series of stand-ins or "display copies" of sculptures by the British artist Barbara Hepworth (1903 - 1975). I was drawn to the works of Hepworth as representative of modern art and its accompanying ideologies. Indeed Hepworth was an artist who believed in abstract art as a catalyst for social progress. In the photo series Display Modern I (Hepworth), I am shown building a cardboard copy of Hepworth's Single Form, the massive bronze created for the forecourt of the United Nations Building in Manhattan. My piece subtracts the urban context and material weight of Hepworth's original in an experiment which tests the potential for pure form to act as a container for modernist ideas of social progress. Display Modern II (Hepworth) is made up of a series of papier mâché copies of well-known stone sculptures by Hepworth. These exact 1:1 scale copies occupy the same physical space as Hepworth's originals but seem to possess a different psychic weight. They are shown carefully placed, the same way Hepworth kept her sculptures in the studio. This artist, like Brancusi, was acutely conscious of how her work was displayed both in the studio and for photographs. |
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