Forbidden Territories: 100 Years of Surreal Landscapes @ The Hepworth Wakefield + Book

Forbidden Territories: 

100 Years of Surreal Landscapes

The Hepworth Wakefield

23 November 2024 – 27 April 2025

The Hepworth Wakefield presents Forbidden Territories: 100 Years of Surreal Landscapes. This major exhibition marks 100 years since Surrealism began with the publication of André Breton’s ‘Manifesto of Surrealism’ in 1924. Taking its title from André Breton’s description of the Surrealist project as “the perpetual excursion into the midst of forbidden territories”, thisis the first UK survey to explore the role of  landscape in one of the most influential artistic, intellectual and literary movements of the twentieth century.

The exhibition brings together over 100 surrealist works, featuring a wide array of British and international artists working across mediums, from Breton’s circle in the 1920s, through to Surrealism’s ongoing resonances in contemporary art. Artists on display include Salvador Dalí, Eileen Agar, Lee Miller and Max Ernst, alongside later Surrealists such as Leonora Carrington, Edith Rimmington, Marion Adnams, Conroy Maddox, Desmond Morris, and contemporary artists working within the legacy of Surrealism such as Shuvinai Ashoona, Stefanie Heinze, Helen Marten, Nicolas Party, and Wael Shawky. Presented in transhistorical groupings, Forbidden Territories explores how Surreal ideas can turn landscape into a metaphor for the unconscious, fuse the bodily with the botanical, and provide means to express political anxieties, gender constraints and freedoms.

Central elements of André Breton’s manifesto, including automatism and psychoanalysis of childhood memories, became a route into re-visioning landscape painting for many Surrealists. Well-known paintings by Max Ernst and Yves Tanguy, which draw on the artists’ formative memories of the forests of Bavaria and seashores of Brittany respectively, will be displayed, alongside the first UK site-specific mural by Swiss artist Nicolas Party. Party is known internationally for hismonumental, immersive murals made with soft pastel, a medium  which holds vivid colours to create fantastical environments. Party will select historic Surreal landscapes to install on the mural, offering a contemporary twist on the Surrealist strategy of collage and juxtaposition.

As well as works by central figures from the movement, such as René Magritte and Francis Picabia, Forbidden Territories foregrounds previously neglected artists and narratives. These include the relationship between Surrealism and ecology, drawing prescient connections topresent day environmental concerns. Visual conversations will be drawn between the humananimal-botanical hybrids of Desmond Morris and Leonora Carrington from the 1950s, to those of Shuvinai Ashoona and Stefanie Heinze working today. Forbidden Territories also includes the first presentation of a new gift of Jean Arp’s plaster sculptures, at The Hepworth Wakefield, generously donated to Wakefield’s art collection by the Jean Arp Foundation. The plasters span several decades of the artist’s career and exemplify the surrealist biomorphism at the heart of his practice.

Surrealism responded to times of political upheaval. A series of works, made around the period of WWI, by Salvador Dalí, Gordon Onslow Ford and Mervyn Evans convey political tensions through uncanny landscapes. This section of the exhibition will also feature several sculptures and paintings by Egyptian contemporary artist Wael Shawky. These are presented alongside Lee Miller’s photographs of Egypt taken during WWI, creating a dialogue between these diverse surreal depictions of the landscapes of North Africa with undertones of political and societal tensions.

Forbidden Territories features a solo presentation of works by Mary Wykeham, a now underrecognized Surrealist artist who decided to become a nun in 1950, at the height of her career. The display includes her paintings, drawings, etchings on paper and copper printing plates, and is the largest public showing of Wykeham’s work since her solo show of 1949 at Galerie des Deux Îles, Paris. It marks the donation of a large group of works by Wykeham to The Hepworth Wakefield by her family, a body of work preserved by the convent where she spent her final years.

A final section of the exhibition brings together new work by contemporary artists María Berrío and Ro Robertson alongside Surrealists Ithell Colquhoun, Eileen Agar and Dora Maar, to explore ideas of gender identity and autofiction within bodies of water. 

Eleanor Clayton, Head of Collection and Exhibitions, said: ‘This unique survey will take visitors on a fantastical journey through an array of surrealist landscapes, some well-known and some rarely seen. Bringing exceptional modern art in dialogue with the best of contemporary practice is at the heart of our programme at The Hepworth Wakefield. We are delighted to be showing long-established masterpieces in Wakefield for the first time, alongside newly commissioned artwork, showing that the influence of Surrealism – one of the most dynamic and wide-reaching art movements of the twentieth century – is still alive to this day.’

Forbidden Territories: 

100 Years of Surreal Landscapes

Published by Thames and Hudson

A book of the same title is published by Thames and Hudson and edited by The Hepworth Wakefield’s Head of Collection and Exhibitions, Eleanor Clayton to accompany the exhibition. The book includes essays by Clayton, Patricia Allmer, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at the University of Edinburgh; Anna Reid, Senior Lecturer History of Art at the University of Leeds; and Tor Scott, Curatorial Assistant, National Galleries of Scotland. It is interspersed with texts by artists including André Breton, María Berrío, Helen Marten, Ro Robertson and Mary Wykeham offering contemporary and historical perspectives on Surrealism.

Forbidden Territories at The Hepworth Wakefield is presenting concurrently with The Traumatic Surreal at Henry Moore Institute in Leeds. The Traumatic Surreal brings together work made after 1960 through to the present day to explore the radical appropriation and development of surrealist sculptural traditions by women artists in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg.

THE HEPWORTH WAKEFIELD

Gallery Walk, Wakefield, West Yorkshire WF1 5AW

hepworthwakefield.org

Artist Sylvia Snowden @ The Hepworth Wakefield - "Painting Humanity" Exhibition

Sylvia Snowden: Painting Humanity 

The Hepworth Wakefield 

16 March - 3 November 2024 

Sylvia Snowden  

Elueeta Johnson, 1978 

© Sylvia Snowden 

Courtesy Edel Assanti and Franklin Parrasch Gallery 

Photo by Andy Keate

Sylvia Snowden 

Beverly Johnson, 1978 

© Sylvia Snowden 

Courtesy Edel Assanti and Franklin Parrasch Gallery 

Photo by Andy Keate

Sylvia Snowden 

Steven Thornhill, 1979 

© Sylvia Snowden 

Courtesy Edel Assanti and Franklin Parrasch Gallery 

Photo by Andy Keate

Sylvia Snowden 

Julia Shepherd, 1980

© Sylvia Snowden 

Courtesy Edel Assanti and Franklin Parrasch Gallery 

Photo by Andy Keate

The Hepworth Wakefield presents the first public gallery exhibition in Europe of work by African-American painter Sylvia Snowden. The exhibition presents a selection of paintings from a career that spans six decades.

Painting Humanity includes seven large acrylic and oil pastel works painted in the late 1970s and 1980s. Despite being named after people that Sylvia Snowden knew from her neighbourhood, these works are not conventional portraits and her figures are not intended to be physically recognisable as the individuals for whom they are named. Rather, Sylvia Snowden’s paintings, typically of lone figures with vibrant and highly expressive combinations of colour, convey the psychological states of her particular subjects – their triumphs, torments, joys and pains. 

Sylvia Snowden’s interest in expressing fundamental human qualities can also be seen in three more recent paintings from 1999 and 2001. The movement and dynamism in these paintings reveal how passionate she is about paint, and still very much excited by its potential. Her works are a strident depiction of empathy, compassion and understanding. 

Portrait of Sylvia Snowden 

Photo by Ellie Smith 

Sylvia Snowden 

The Hepworth Wakefield, 15 March 2024 

Photo by Nick Singleton

Sylvia Snowden was born in 1942 in North Carolina and raised in Louisiana before moving to Washington DC at the age of 13. Sylvia Snowden took undergraduate and postgraduate studies in fine art at Howard University between 1960 and 1965. Sylvia Snowden’s artistic training took place during a pivotal moment in Black American political history and the civil rights struggle, and she became deeply invested in these issues. Sylvia Snowden describes her powerful figurative paintings as ‘portraits of humanity’.

Laura Smith, Director of Collection & Exhibitions at The Hepworth Wakefield, said: ‘We are delighted to be staging Snowden’s first solo exhibition in a European public gallery. The project will introduce many more people to Snowden’s large and expressive paintings of lone, misshapen bodies depicted in vibrant clashes of colour and paint so thick it is almost sculptural. Snowden’s are not traditional portraits, rather an effort to convey human psychological states. We believe our audiences will enjoy the emotional intensity of encountering Snowden’s work.’ 

THE HEPWORTH WAKEFIELD

Gallery Walk, Wakefield, West Yorkshire, WF1 5AW

hepworthwakefield.org

Artist Igshaan Adams @ The Hepworth Wakefield - "Weerhoud" Exhibition

Igshaan Adams: Weerhoud

The Hepworth Wakefield

22 June – 3 November 2024

Igshaan Adams 

Jaime-Lee, Dustin, 2023 

Cotton twine, polypropylene and nylon rope, mohair wool, 

plastic, glass and semi precious stone beads, silver-linked chain 

and tiger tail wire. 198 x 290 cm

© Igshaan Adams

Courtesy of the artist, Thomas Dane Gallery and blank projects

Photo: Mario Todeschini 

Igshaan Adams 

Jaime-Lee, Dustin (detail) 2023 

© Igshaan Adams

Courtesy of the artist, Thomas Dane Gallery and blank projects. 

Photo: Mario Todeschini 

The Hepworth Wakefield presents a solo exhibition by South African artist Igshaan Adams. Entitled Weerhoud, meaning ‘Withheld’ in Afrikaans, the exhibition examines the impact of lived experiences and traumas on the human psyche, with a particular emphasis on the healing potential of movement. Adams will present three new commissions created specifically for the exhibition, consisting of two tapestries and one of his largest immersive ‘cloud’ installations to date. These new works are exhibited alongside a selection of existing sculptures and textile pieces. Weerhoud presents an exciting development in Igshaan Adams’ practice, shifting his focus from domestic spaces and landscapes to the body.

Portrait of Igshaan Adams 

Courtesy the artist 

Photo by Mario Todeschini

Igshaan Adams was born in 1982 in Bonteheuwel, a suburb of Cape Town, South Africa. He grew up navigating the complexities of identity under apartheid’s racial classification system. His work spans a wide spectrum, encompassing intricate tapestries, expansive floor and wall-based installations, and immersive suspended sculptures. Igshaan Adams’ work focuses on the nuanced remnants of human experiences, examining the impressions – ranging from the barely perceptible to the obvious – left by individuals within their homes, cities, natural environments, and their own bodies. His practice challenges apartheid’s attempt to confine people through racialised spaces, portraying the body as a catalyst for resistance against dominant structures. In 2018, he was awarded the prestigious Standard Bank Young Artist Award and subsequently featured in numerous exhibitions worldwide, going on to present his work at the 2022 Venice Biennale and the 2023 Bienal de São Paulo.

Igshaan Adams’ new tapestries are derived from an ongoing series of dance workshops in which he collaborates with young dancers from the Garage Dance Ensemble, a dance group based in O’okiep within South Africa’s Northern Cape Province. The dancers are encouraged to intuitively interact with a large canvas placed on top of freshly painted linoleum, leaving behind traces and creating abstract paint marks with their bodies. The resulting ‘paintings’ are then used as inspiration to create tapestries. Igshaan Adams considers the dancers’ bodies and movements as repositories of memories and trauma and is interested in recording in his tapestries a trace of their psyche. He understands ‘movement as a medium through which one can mend internal brokenness, even when clarity or memory is lacking.’ Igshaan Adams views each resulting tapestry as deeply personal to the dancers, often naming them after specific performers. Adorned with beads, chains, stones, shells, ribbons and ropes, some areas are deliberately left unwoven, revealing negative space, further evoking a sense of fragmentation or incompleteness.

Igshaan Adams’ new cloud sculpture offers visitors an immersive experience, allowing them to walk through the cloud as they navigate the exhibition space. This cloud installation will integrate wires, beads, and various found objects, such as shower heads, lampshades, and chairs. Through these elements, he reflects on how past experiences shape our present identities.

Igshaan Adams 

Oorskot, 2016 

Courtesy of the artist. Private collection 

© Igshaan Adams 

Courtesy the artist, Thomas Dane Gallery and blank projects

Igshaan Adams 

Ouma, 2016 

Courtesy of the artist. Private collection 

© Igshaan Adams 

Courtesy the artist, Thomas Dane Gallery and blank projects 

Igshaan Adams 

Ameen, 2018 

Courtesy of the artist 

© Igshaan Adams 

Courtesy the artist, Thomas Dane Gallery and blank projects

Igshaan Adams 

Bent, 2018 

Courtesy of the artist 

© Igshaan Adams 

Courtesy the artist, Thomas Dane Gallery and blank projects

Igshaan Adams: Weerhoud also revisits works created between 2014 and 2019, including some that have been deliberately degraded by time, showing signs of age and fragmentation. Some artworks, including Ameen (2018) have been exposed to the elements and damaged, with scars becoming integral to their composition. Others evoke a feeling of detachment from a larger whole, appearing vulnerable and open to influence. A tapestry titled, Bent (2018) Adams explains is ‘akin to a flower bending towards sunlight to absorb rays more effectively.’ These earlier works, along with the new commissions, ask what spaces, materials, and bodies can encompass; what remains held within us; and how we adjust to our environment, whether it be in positive or negative ways.

Marie-Charlotte Carrier, Curator at The Hepworth Wakefield, said ‘Audiences need to experience Igshaan Adams’s art to fully appreciate the incredible skill and care that goes into creating each very detailed and powerful new work. I am excited to share the artist’s most ambitious work to date at The Hepworth Wakefield this summer and capture Adams’ new artistic focus on the body.’

The exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield is accompanied by a book featuring essays by Curator Marie-Charlotte Carrier, Curator and Writer Nkgopoleng Moloi, Garage Dance Ensemble co-founder Alfred Hinkel, and an interview with Igshaan Adams led by Marie-Charlotte Carrier and Laura Smith, Director of Collections and Exhibitions. 

THE HEPWORTH WAKEFIELD

Gallery Walk, Wakefield, West Yorkshire, WF1 5AW

hepworthwakefield.org

Still Life Exhibition @ The Hepworth Wakefield - "Still Lives"

Still Lives 

The Hepworth Wakefield 

1 March 2024 – January 2025

Bernard Meninsky 

Lilies, 1917

Rene Matić 

Southbank Centre Dressing Room II, London, 2023 

Courtesy of The Artist and Arcadia Missa, London 

Photo: Nathan Vidler

Nicolaes van Verendael 

Still Life with a Lobster, 1678

The Hepworth Wakefield presents an exhibition focusing on the theme of still life. Still Lives will display more than 70 works by over 50 artists across two galleries, illustrating the enduring nature of the still life genre throughout different epochs in art history, including post-impressionism, British modernism, surrealism and contemporary art. The exhibition reflects upon the enduring inspiration artists have found in everyday objects, from an interest in colour and form, to a desire to capture their impermanence. While still life is traditionally associated with painting, the exhibition will feature works from a range of artistic mediums including sculpture, photography, ceramics, painting and works-on-paper.

Still Lives will display three of the oldest artworks in Wakefield’s art collection by renowned Dutch masters – Jacob Foppens van Es, Willem Ormea and Nicolaes van Verendael – that date back to the seventeenth century, highlighting the emergence of still life painting in the Netherlands. These will be presented in dialogue with contemporary artworks, proposing unlikely conversations.

Anthea Hamilton

Melon, 2017

Caroline Walker 

Noor, 3.30pm, Leyton, 2017 

© Caroline Walker. Courtesy the artist; 

Stephen Friedman Gallery, London; 

GRIMM Gallery and Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh. 

Photo: Peter Mallet

Veronica Ryan 

Sweet Dreams are Made of These, 2021 

Photo: George Baggaley

Pivotal additions to Wakefield’s art collection during the initial decades of the twentieth century by artists such as Roger Fry, Ivon Hitchens, Frances Hodgkins, Anne Estelle Rice and Geer Van Velde will show how, through the deconstruction and distortion of familiar objects, these artists contributed to significant debates in modern art. Some works in the exhibition look beyond objects, exploring the idea of stillness within domestic settings. Artists such as Vanessa Bell, John Collier, Patrick Heron, Mabel Layng and Walter Sickert capture the silence and tranquillity inherent in interior spaces, while providing intimate glimpses into their environments. Still Lives will also include several recent artworks that have been generously donated to Wakefield’s art collection in the last year. Noor, 3:30pm, Leyton, 2017, a large-scale oil painting by Caroline Walker and three photographs from Rene Matić’s a girl for the living room, 2023 series will go on public display for the first time since their acquisition. Contemporary sculptures by Steve Claydon, Anthea Hamilton, Eva Rothschild and Veronica Ryan present incongruous arrangements of familiar objects, creating scenes that hover between the strangely ordinary and the extraordinary.

Marie-Charlotte Carrier, Curator at The Hepworth Wakefield said: ‘This thematic exhibition is timed to coincide with Wakefield’s ‘Our Year’ celebration of culture across the district throughout 2024. It showcases the breadth of Wakefield’s art collection, which was established a century ago in 1923 and continues to be developed by The Hepworth Wakefield today as a rich resource for Wakefield residents and visitors alike. While artists have been drawn to still life across the centuries, the genre has often been disregarded or considered less important in the history of art. Still Lives is a wonderful opportunity to show historic works that haven’t been displayed at The Hepworth Wakefield for a long time alongside new acquisitions that have joined the collection recently through the generosity of donors.’

THE HEPWORTH WAKEFIELD

Gallery Walk, Wakefield, West Yorkshire, WF1 5AW

hepworthwakefield.org

Kim Lim @ The Hepworth Wakefield - "Space, Rhythm & Light" Exhibition

Kim Lim: Space, Rhythm & Light

The Hepworth Wakefield

25 November 2023 – 2 June 2024

The Hepworth Wakefield presents the first major museum exhibition of Kim Lim’s work since 1999, offering unparalleled insight into the artist’s life and work. Space, Rhythm & Light displays over 100 artworks created over four decades by Kim Lim, alongside extensive archive material, most of which has never been seen publicly before, to show the full breadth of Kim Lim’s work.

KIM LIM (1936-1997) was born in Singapore to Chinese parents. She travelled to the UK in 1954 to study art, first at Central Saint Martin’s School of Fine Art (1954 - 1956) where she was taught by Anthony Caro and Elizabeth Frink and then at the Slade School of Art (1956 - 1960). Kim Lim remained in Britain for the rest of her life, establishing a successful career that has since fallen from view; her work was acquired for museum collections across the globe and she had substantial exhibitions at Axiom Gallery, London, National Museum of Art, Singapore, and Tate Gallery, London. In recent years, Lim’s work has begun to feature more prominently in major group survey exhibitions and publications, bringing her important artistic legacy back into view in British post-war art histories.

Space, Rhythm & Light explores Kim Lim’s focused engagement with abstraction across a wide range of media and materials. Inspired by forms found in the natural world as well as those in global cultures, Lim’s distinct contribution to 20th-century British sculpture and printmaking has been widely overlooked compared to her contemporaries. On display are Kim Lim’s multipart wood and metal sculptures that defined her work between the 1950s and 1970s, as well as her later minimalist stone carvings made in the 1980s and 1990s. The exhibition pays special attention to Lim’s printmaking - a practice she felt was equally important as sculpting, but for which she is less well known. Prints and unique ‘paper cut’ works are displayed with corresponding sculptures to show how methods of carving were interconnected in Lim’s interdisciplinary exploration of nature, light and architecture. Also featured are selected maquettes, sketchbooks, audio recordings, and documentary photographs of Lim’s own personal library of research objects and her studio.

Kim Lim cited travel as one of the most important aspects of her art education and development, and visited Japan, Cambodia, Malaysia, China and India between the 1960s and 1980s to ‘see things in its place where it was meant to be, in the light that it was meant to be’. Rarely seen photographs taken by the artist documenting her travels in Asia with her husband, the artist William Turnbull, will highlight how Lim absorbed diverse cultural and historic references, as well as drawing on her own multicultural background, to develop her minimalist approach to abstraction.

Dr Abi Shapiro, Curator, said: ‘Space, Rhythm & Light is the most comprehensive exhibition of Kim Lim’s work to date. Lim’s contribution is often overlooked in histories of post-war British art, but here, in the context of the legacy of Barbara Hepworth at The Hepworth Wakefield, there couldn’t be a better time or place to showcase the quality and value of Lim’s work. I am very grateful to the Kim Lim Estate for their generosity in allowing us to share so much information which provide visitors with an in-depth understanding of how Lim developed her technical mastery of numerous materials as well as her own unique style and visual language.’

The Estate of Kim Lim commented on the exhibition: ‘We are delighted that UK audiences have the opportunity to encounter the breadth of Kim Lim’s artistic practice through this exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield. Over the last few years, we have felt an incredibly positive response from the public sector in promoting Kim Lim’s work, and rebalancing many of the outmoded and limiting art historical narratives still in play. It seems fitting that Kim Lim’s first major UK museum show since 1999 should be hosted by an institution so closely associated with another artist, Barbara Hepworth, who challenged these very narratives through her practice and life.’

Kim Lim: Space, Rhythm & Light 

Exhibition Catalogue

An illustrated book, published by Lund Humphries and supported by Paul Mellon Centre, accompanies the exhibition. It is the first monograph of the artist and  includes writings by a range of leading academics, artists and curators from across the globe, situating Kim Lim’s work more firmly within post-war British sculpture histories, as well as exploring reasons for her marginalisation in narratives since her death.

THE HEPWORTH WAKEFIELD

Gallery Walk, Wakefield, West Yorkshire WF1 5AW

hepworthwakefield.org

Anthony McCall @ The Hepworth Wakefield - Solid Light Works

Anthony McCall: Solid Light Works
The Hepworth Wakefield 
16 February - 3 June 2018

Anthony McCall 

Face to Face (II) (2013) 

Installation view, Eye Film Museum, Amsterdam, 2014 

Photograph by Hans Wilschut

The Hepworth Wakefield presents a major survey of work by British born artist Anthony McCall (b.1946). Solid Light Works is the first UK exhibition of McCall’s work in over a decade and includes the UK premiere of three new ‘solid light’ installations. 

Anthony McCall 

Doubling Back (2003) 

Installation view, LAC, Lugano, 2015 

Photograph by Stefania Beretta 

Anthony McCall describes his practice as existing in the space where cinema, sculpture and drawing overlap. He is best known for his large-scale, immersive sculptural light installations that incorporate the visitor and invite them to become active participants in the work.

Anthony McCall said “I am thrilled to be showing in the UK and particularly in the David Chipperfield designed galleries at The Hepworth Wakefield. These carefully proportioned and gently angled spaces are unusually sympathetic to the work on display.”

Anthony McCall 

Five Minute Drawing, 1974/2007 

Installation view at the Musée de Rochechouart, 2007 

Photograph by Bruno Barlier

Anthony McCall 

Five Minute Drawing, 1974/2007 

Installation view at the Musée de Rochechouart, 2007 

Photograph by Bruno Barlier

The exhibition has been shaped closely with Anthony McCall and explores all facets of his work. It highlights how drawing has been an enduring and essential component of his practice. At the heart of the exhibition, two galleries are devoted to a survey of his graphic works. These rooms emphasize the importance of drawing for Anthony McCall, both as a way to imagine three-dimensional form and to explore temporal structure.

For Anthony McCall, the circle, the straight line, and the wave are the basic elements that underpin his practice and each solid light work is a variation of these drawn shapes, often concealing, revealing or traveling through one another. The exhibition will demonstrate Anthony McCall’s meticulous planning of how a drawn line or shape will behave when rendered as though it were a physical three-dimensional structure. The drawings and notebooks will also show how Anthony McCall’s current work remains in active dialogue with his earliest ideas.

Anthony McCall

Face to Face II (2013)

Installation maquette 

The Eye Museum, Amsterdam, 2014

Anthony McCall

Landscape for Fire II (1972) 

16mm film still

Many of the works on paper connect directly to the three solid light installations in the exhibition. Harnessing the full capabilities of digital projection, Anthony McCall’s new installations are minimal in means, using only projected light and a thin mist, yet they create physically powerful works that take on the appearance of sculptural forms in space. These works are in a permanent state of flux, moving slowly through precisely mapped sequences that advance and return in repeating cycles over the course of the day. Visitors are encouraged to engage with the planes and chambers created by the projections which, at their expanded scale, take on almost architectural qualities.

Anthony McCall 

Leaving (with Two-Minute Silence) (2006/8).

Pair of working drawings in a set of 24. 

Pencil on paper, each 28 cm x 35 cm

Anthony McCall 

Smoke Screen (2017) 

Gelatin silver print, 156 cm x 114 cm.

Anthony McCall began his career in the UK, making outdoor performances based on grids of small fires. Shortly after moving to New York in 1973, he produced his first solid light work, the 16mm film Line Describing a Cone. Anthony McCall went on to produce a number of variations of this piece where, as the projected form unfolded, or swept through the darkened spaces, ambient dust and cigarette smoke created the illusion of volume. These works were related to the Expanded Cinema and Structural Film explorations of the London Filmmakers Cooperative. Line Describing a Cone will be restaged and shown in full at The Hepworth Wakefield over a special weekend of activity during the exhibition.

Anthony McCall withdrew from his artistic practice at the end of the 1970s, establishing a successful graphic design studio that specialised in art publications. He reemerged in the 2000s, propelled by the development of the haze machine and of digital projection, that together enabled him to realise more ambitious concepts. Anthony McCall has attracted international recognition for his work, taking part in numerous important solo and group exhibitions at acclaimed institutions and his work is represented in collections worldwide.

THE HEPWORTH WAKEFIELD
Gallery Walk, Wakefield, West Yorkshire WF15AW
hepworthwakefield.org