28-11-2022 | Display Methods: Grouping Objects

Thinking about working with sculpture and installation, I began to look at ideas of grouping objects in a meaningful way. How can life be brought to a set of sculptures for instance? Dame Barbara Hepworth produced many examples of successful grouping, in displays which identify clear relationships between individual forms.

In a different medium, I experienced this effect when visiting Tate Modern’s current exhibition of work by Magdalena Abakanowicz. Her imposing Abakans have been installed utilising the artist’s distinctive ideas on grouping, resulting in a forest-like configuration which can be walked around in any number of pathways. I’m interested in how a family archive, and artwork produced from it can be structured like a forest, in terms of elements existing in symbiosis.

1. Dame Barbara Hepworth, Group II (People Waiting), 1952

2. Magdalena Abakanowicz, Abakans, late 1960s - early 1970s. Installation view, Tate Modern, London, 2022