Metallic

About

First came the Bronze Age, then the Iron Age and now comes the time of all metals at Burghley Sculpture Garden. The 2016 exhibition Metallic explores dynamic sculptures in stainless steel, copper, iron, aluminium and bronze. The ductility and malleability of metal has lent it to a myriad of forms, evidenced in the production of arms, armour, cooking utensils, jewellery and of course, sculptures. Some of the earliest techniques for metal forming included forging and casting with exquisite bronzes produced in ancient Egypt, Greece, the Roman Empire and beyond. Shift forwards several millennia and these early metal sculptures influenced Modernism, with the sinuously stretched Etruscan bronze figures prompting Giacometti’s exaggerated elongation of the human body.   

20th Century technological advancements, such as welding in the late 1920s, expanded possibilities for part by part construction, as typified by the welded sculptures of Gonzalez and Picasso. Their linear and relatively small fabrications took on greater mass with the emergence of artists such as Anthony Caro in the 1960s, who, along with David Smith, welded larger sculptures from industrial components.

In Metallic, the techniques of casting, fabricating, welding and weaving are present. In fact, the process of casting is central to Iron Stag by Dido Crosby. It toys with conventions by revealing an interior that normally remains hidden. Its external surfaces depict the beast’s fur and antlers as one might expect, yet surprisingly, moving around the sculpture reveals it to be a hollow skin. Marjan Wouda’s joyful crab Scrabble highlights the ability of liquid metal to take on the form and appearance of other materials, by translating the transient nature of corrugated cardboard into the permanence of bronze. Signs of the cardboard having been ripped in the making process remain evident, as do the undulations of its corrugated structure; the patination is unnervingly reminiscent of cardboard.

A shift from casting to welding is denoted by the sculpture of Jim Unsworth. He uses colour to differentiate parts and thereby underline internal differences. In Soprano, heavy metal dematerialises into painted colour, singing colour, zinging colour. Its tri-colour patination through black, yellow and pink also encompasses the greens of surrounding foliage thanks to the holes punctured through its surfaces. Diane Maclean exploits the light responsiveness of brushed stainless steel in Beyond, a sculpture that responds to and changes with ambient light. Walking through its three portals brings these reflections of light into motion, as well as making the landscape and viewer an active part of the work.

Whilst some of the sculptures depict mass through volume, others are skeletal. For example, Will Nash’s Fever, if you Live and Learn is pure structure. It arrived in parts, which Nash then assembled around an Ash tree to create a site specific response to landscape and horticulture. The slanting growth of the tree is complemented by a grid that reads variously as diamonds, rectangular lozenges or chevrons according to the observer’s relative position.   

Many more offerings in metal are included in the exhibition by the following artists: Mark Beattie, Ian Campbell Briggs, Laury Dizengremel, Nick Horrigan, Linda Johns, John McDonald, Lee Odishow, Carol Peace, Andrew Stonyer, Victoria Rance, Sheila Vollmer, Jane Wafer & Peter Walker. Overall, Metallic reveals the extent to which sculptors can modulate the form of both ferrous and non-ferrous metals and the sculptures on show are testimony to the amazing flexibility of metal in adopting all kinds of form and aesthetic. We therefore hope you will enjoy the breadth of metallic activity on show.