Prospects and Interiors (No. 59)

Description

The exhibition Prospects and Interiors looked at drawings by contemporary sculptors that depicted the idea of ‘interior space’. The selection of works covered a wide range of styles and techniques, with an interest in both physical and mental contexts.

In some works, imagined architectural interiors were laid out as virtual stage sets; in others, close up studies turned floors, walls and furnishings into abstract patterns, and expressive drawings attempted to describe the interior spaces of the mind, those places onto which we project our hopes and fears.

Running throughout the show was the sculptor's concern with finding a way of representing space as matter. It explored the peculiar ability of the drawn line to make evident usually invisible currents and forces - such as heat, sound and emotion - and to dissolve material differences between objects and space.

The exhibition suggested that, through drawing, sculptors can express space in new ways - in terms of light and shade, emotional and physical forces and particles of matter - and make 'nothingness' into something that is 'full' and charged with energy.

This issue of our Essays on Sculpture journal is written by Sophie Raikes (Assistant Curator (Sculpture), the Henry Moore Institute) and edited by Penelope Curtis (Curator of the Henry Moore Institute).