THE SCULPTURE SHOW

V22 PRESENTS is a series of projects produced in collaboration with artists, curators and art organisations in a variety of venues around London. V22 PRESENTS decided to explore the modes of thought and production in sculpture. To open a dialogue we put to five artists: Shahin Afrassiabi, Sam Basu, Simon Bill, Cedric Christie, Fergal Stapleton the following opening statement:

For the second project V22 PRESENTS have invited 5 artist curators to select works that engage with current developments and critiques in contemporary Sculpture.

The archaic term Sculpture can no longer contain the multiple directions and potentials that artists have attributed to it throughout its history.

Through bringing together diverse approaches and understanding from internationally renowned artists, groups and projects V22 PRESENTS: The Sculpture Show is an opportunity to engage with the diverse potentials that have come to encapsulate and exist within the definition Sculpture.

The ultimate dialogue will be the show, but it begins here.

Shahin Afrassiabi: I only have one objection regarding the sentence that mentions artist curators. Wouldn't it be better to just say artists? I certainly don't see myself as a curator and that description is so irrelevant in this context. It is certainly much more interesting as well to ask artists to select works rather than using the trendy moniker. Also one other thing re: the introduction containing "archaic term sculpture". I am worried that it will come across as an irrelevance and negative. To premise a whole show on that is rather archaic in itself. Looking at current practice it is evident that the term sculpture is indeed multi-dimensional if not wholly critical:Today the archaic term Sculpture contains the multiple directions and potentials that artists have attributed to it throughout its history. But then this sentence has to be qualified in some way. Why sculpture? I would offer the idea that sculpture is once again important precisely because it has the potential to be critical of architecture i.e. spatial organisation.

Simon Bill: Apparently there’s no workable, universally agreed, definition of sculpture these days. Your safest bet is to define it negatively - a sculpture can be absolutely anything in the world provided it’s not a painting. Or you could try asking one of the graduates of St. Martins’ ‘Sculpture B’ course, from the period circa 1967 - 77. They probably had nothing down on paper about it but they were quite sure they knew what sculpture is. They were militant about it. They even came to blows with the dissenting ‘Sculpture A’ students - performance artists; conceptualists; installationists; Letraset and typewriter jockeys.

Sam Basu: “The Sculpture Show bridges the spaces of art and our world, uncovering trends that place sculpture in the role of a unifying dialogue between the spaces of architecture, psychology, and politics.(This list could be developed) From the site where the irreconcilable and contradictory can coexist, to unions that activate arts ability to define as it appropriates, The Sculpture Show highlights tendencies in art practice that demand more than the acceptance of Art as a goal. It places synthesis and emergence at its centre. “

Adam Thomas: Given the impetus of the project; inviting artists to play curator and present work for a sculpture show; it is an open system, one with few redundancies which have been exploited, albeit for the best and as we hoped... the trouble is now presenting the background, development and most importantly their implication in a succinct manner which is not overly didactic, one-sided or irrelevant.

Fergal Stapleton:1) I've got that queasy feeling about 'curator' too (in a similar spirit to not appreciating it when all sorts of mugs go around arrogating to themselves the title 'artist'). 2) Para 2 - 'attributed TO it' ? 3) I reckon it's just about right that V22 asks the question and we the artists make our replies through our choices and any other materials we want to include.

Shahin Afrassiabi: Is a bridge between the world and art possible? isn't art utterly alien? Do we want a unifying dialogue between those disciplines through art? Doesn't art readjust viewpoints, complicate allegiances, explode assumptions rather than have a reconciliatory role? There are more questions but this is enough to be getting on with. The question is what is so cool about sculpture now that a show needs to be made of it? There are a whole host of pertinent reasons as far as i am concerned: Spatial organisation (architecture) - material as constitutive of narrative structures (literature) - material generation of action and discourse (politics) I am sure there will be all kinds of works in the show from objects to videos to photos etc. So the title for the show will come across as slightly ironic but in a good way. I mean i personally don't mind irony of a certain kind.

Simon Bill:(1) We may feel that sticking to traditional definitions of sculpture is too restrictive (and, in fact, by the strictest possible definition even ancient Greek sculpture is not sculpture, because it’s mostly cast, and the word literally and strictly refers to carved objects), but a risk of promiscuous redefinition can be a failure to make any net gain, because the redefinition doesn’t bring anything new into the world, it simply re-categorizes something we had already: so, text can be sculpture, but why is it not poetry or reportage? A certain way of moving can be sculpture, but why is that not dance, or Tai Chi? What has been achieved by calling already existing things ‘sculpture’ other than to arrogate to the body of ‘contemporary art’ anything contemporary art takes a fancy to? It’s an effect similar to that of the declaration ‘Everyone is an artist.’ It’s supposed to be that you’re doing a good thing by saying that, but it’s only a good thing if everyone wants to be an artist; and they don’t - only artists think they do. Besides a well meant stab at democratizing, ‘widening the availability’, of art, we have here a sort of phony innovation - you create a ‘new art form’ by getting hold of something people were doing already and saying it’s art. So, we see that happening with architecture, cooking, social work, documentary film making, and so on. You can have ‘Social Sculpture’ but are social sculptors any more effective than, say, an actual politician? If you want to ‘sculpt’ society, i.e. shape it, is the art world a good place to do it from?

(2) A drawback to the modernist practice of constantly redefining accepted terms and concepts is that if you do it too much the whole point of terms and concepts gets defeated and you can end up stuck or in trouble. Suppose we choose to define the word ‘sculpture’ any way we feel like at the time. Suppose we see an artist friend running down the road shouting ‘My house is sculpture!’ We might think, as artists ourselves, that he’s got a good point there, even though his way of expressing it seems extreme. What this artist has done, in fact, without bothering to tell anyone, is that today he has selected the word ‘sculpture’ as an alternative to the expression ‘on fire!’ He’s trying to tell us that his house is on fire.

Sam Basu: There is a small issue concerning NIS; it is a large group of artists etc, but for this presentation we have invited one artist, Matthew Stock, to produce something relevant to the fact of this network. It might initially seem a little strange to represent the workings of the group through one person, but we found that attempting to simulate NIS through made up projects did not ring true. It is the structure of the group that we want to put forward as "sculpture" in this context, and not specific collaborative works coming from it.

Cedric Christie: This show is a converstion between artists; the voice, the ears and the eyes belong to them.

Artists / Organisations

AESD: Agency for Economy and Space Development: Maziar Afrassiabi, Shahin Afrassiabi, Sam Basu, John Collenbrander, with thanks to Julian Meinold and Piers O'Hanlon | NIS: New International School: Matthew Stock | Treignac Project: Sam Basu, Elizabeth Murray.

Phyllida Barlow, Anne Damer, Karin Ruggaber, Audrey Reynolds, Fergal Stapleton, Martin Westwood.

Karen Ay, Fiona Banner, Richard Bartle, David Batchelor, Rob Beckett, Simon Bill, Hartmut Bohm, Cedric Christie, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Clem Crosby, Penelope Curtis, Charlotte Cullinan & Jeanine Richards (ArtLab), Cathy de Monchaux, Arnaud Desjardin, Valerie Driscoll, Richard Ducker, Garth Evans, Urs Fischer, FREEE ( Dave Beech, Andy Hewitt & Mel Jordan), John Gibbons, Kathy Gili, Tom Gidley, Paul Gilda, Andrea Giulius, Stewart Gough, Naum Gabo, Brian Griffiths, Nicola Hicks, Peter Hide, Flore Nore Josserand, Helene Kazan, Philip King, Simon Liddimant, Ed Lipski, Colin Lowe, Christina Mackie, Bruce McLean, Rebecca Johnson Marshall, Haroon Mirza, Henry Moore, Zadoc Nava, Lawson Oyekan, Nicholas Pope, Richard Priestly, Pablo Picasso, Michael Sandle, Paul Sakoilsky, Celine Scott, Dallas Seitz, Meg Shirayama, Jane Simpson, Anthony Smart ,Bob & Roberta Smith, Richard Smith, Sarah Staton, Dan Stevens, Michael Stubbs, Vanya St Van Bray, Simon Stringer, Gavin Turk, Jessica Voorsanger, Keith Wilson, Christian Wulffen, Mark Woods, Richard Woods, Lars Wolter.

THE SCULPTURE SHOW
Ort: The Almond Building, The Biscuit Factory, Drummond Road, Bermondsey, London

Künstler/ Organisationen:
AESD: Agency for Economy and Space Development: Maziar Afrassiabi, Shahin Afrassiabi, Sam Basu, John Collenbrander, with thanks to Julian Meinold and Piers O'Hanlon | NIS: New International School: Matthew Stock | Treignac Project: Sam Basu, Elizabeth Murray.
Phyllida Barlow, Anne Damer, Karin Ruggaber, Audrey Reynolds, Fergal Stapleton, Martin Westwood.
Karen Ay, Fiona Banner, Richard Bartle, David Batchelor, Rob Beckett, Simon Bill, Hartmut Bohm, Cedric Christie, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Clem Crosby, Penelope Curtis, Charlotte Cullinan & Jeanine Richards (ArtLab), Cathy de Monchaux, Arnaud Desjardin, Valerie Driscoll, Richard Ducker, Garth Evans, Urs Fischer, Freee , John Gibbons, Kathy Gili, Tom Gidley, Paul Gilda, Andrea Giulius, Stewart Gough, Naum Gabo, Brian Griffiths, Nicola Hicks, Peter Hide, Flore Nore Josserand, Helene Kazan, Philip King, Simon Liddimant, Ed Lipski, Colin Lowe, Christina Mackie, Bruce McLean, Rebecca Johnson Marshall, Haroon Mirza, Henry Moore, Zadoc Nava, Lawson Oyekan, Nicholas Pope, Richard Priestly, Pablo Picasso, Michael Sandle, Paul Sakoilsky, Celine Scott, Dallas Seitz, Meg Shirayama, Jane Simpson, Anthony Smart ,Bob & Roberta Smith, Richard Smith, Sarah Staton, Dan Stevens, Michael Stubbs, Vanya St Van Bray, Simon Stringer, Gavin Turk, Jessica Voorsanger, Keith Wilson, Christian Wulffen, Mark Woods, Richard Woods, Lars Wolter.