HOLD by Julia Vance MRBS

About

To celebrate the work of female sculptors for the fourth year of the collaboration between the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the Royal British Society of Sculptors, we are delighted to present HOLD, a work by Norwegian contemporary artist Julia Vance, to be unveiled in Napoleon Garden, Holland Park on Wednesday 20 May 2015. 

Carved in white Italian Carrara marble, at first glance the smooth precisely defined planes and hollowed interior of HOLD seem like a caress of benevolent arms. Yet on further observation details start to take shape and the letters of the word ‘HOLD’ reveal themselves. Transformed from the two-dimensional into the solid blocks and forms of sculpture, Vance gives a single word a physical tactile and expressive body; an embodiment of the contextual meaning expressed in physical form. You can read HOLD with your body, you can touch the word, or you can even crawl inside it and the word can hold you. Both classical in form and conceptual in expression, Vance’s work effortlessly highlights the complexity and depth of a single word by means of a form of sculptural poetry.

Having begun her career as a calligrapher, words are at the heart of Vance’s oeuvre. Often reflecting on issues of identity and a sense of belonging Vance’s sculptures offer a moment of pause from the constant bombardment of information we are presented with daily. Speaking of her work Vance comments, “We use language to express, understand, and shape a thought. I want to clarify that unexpected thought, or to grasp the multiple delicate nuances of what a single word holds.”

About Julia Vance MRBS 
 
Julia Vance (born 1968) is a Norwegian sculptor. Having started working in stone in 1992, Vance has received numerous large scale commissions and been the recipient of several grants, including the Norwegian State’s 3-Year Artist Grant in 2005. She has twice had sculptures exhibited in front of the Norwegian Parliament and was recently invited to join Norway Central Bank’s Coin Design Advisory Committee. Vance was also recently featured as the main focus of the documentary, The Bridge to Tuscany which focused on Norwegian artists who have travelled to Italy over the past 100 years to make their sculptures, and which was broadcast on national Norwegian television.

Vance has exhibited in England, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Belgium, Italy, Holland and the United Arab Emirates. Her most recent solo exhibition in Norway took place in Bærum Kunstforening in 2014, showing over 30 sculptures in Italian marble, along with work in granite, alabaster, glass and bronze. Her work is represented in private collections throughout Europe and the US. The artist shares her time between Oslo and Johansen Monumenthuggeri in Norway and the internationally renowned marble carving studio Studio Sem in Pietrasanta, Italy; she can be reached at www.juliavance.no. 

Napoleon Garden 2015 is kindly supported by: The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the Royal Norwegian Embassy London and the Royal British Society of Sculptors.