Part 3: sculpture / 3D

Chris Wilkinson: From landscape to portrait

This year was a disappointment for me as far as sculpture was concerned.  The piece above is attractive enough, and a clever idea, but, ....  Although I paid more attention to prints than before, I did try to keep an eye open for sculptures too.  I thought that the piece in the first room was brilliantly placed because of the red walls hung with bright paintings.

Leonard McComb: Portrait of a young man standing

The idea to paint the walls red was that of the artist with overall responsibility for this year's more viewer-friendly hang: Tess Jaray.  I was delighted with the effect it had on the sculpture, but that's about it for the sculpture as far as I was concerned.

David Mach has made yet another clever sculpture out of wire coat hangers - I was bowled over by the first one I saw, was happy to recognise the next few, but now I'm bored with the idea, just as I am bored with his multiple postcard collages.  His work which once wowed me now seems lazy and glib.

David Nash has one piece: Hump with a hole, which looked sorry for itself, and completely out of place in its surroundings.  I much prefer the look of these three humps in his present exhibition at Kew.

Indeed the main room full of sculpture - room VII - made me want to get out as quickly as possible.  One piece only attracted me: a piece of ceramic by Philip Eglin.

Philip Eglin: Poor taped helicopter

That and another ceramic piece by Edmund de Waal, high up on a wall in splendid isolation in the Large Weston Room, were the only 3D pieces I really admired.  The de Waal is entitled A lament, I don't know if it is named for the Purcell Dido and Aeneas (The lament) which he has called 'the most moving piece of music you will find'.  I cannot find a photo of the piece, a white aluminium shelf with white glazed porcelain vessels, but I found it wonderfully elegant.