Full Description
In 1994 painter John Hoyland made an unruly group of ceramic sculptures. Loaded with colour, humour and creatureliness, he dubbed them 'these mad little hybrids'. They now appear remarkably contemporary, in sync with a broad range of recent and current sculpture. These Mad Hybrids: John Hoyland and Contemporary Sculpture presents the ceramics in dialogue with sculpture by Caroline Achaintre, Eric Bainbridge, Phyllida Barlow, Olivia Bax, Hew Locke, Anna Reading, Jessi Reaves, Andrew Sabin, John Summers and Chiffon Thomas.
Essays by co-curators Olivia Bax and Sam Cornish situate the ceramics within contemporary sculptural discourse and in relation to Hoyland's deep personal engagement with sculpture. How and why could a sculpture be funny? How did sculpture help an abstract painter rethink his relationship with the High Modernist tradition and find a new relationship with the wider world? James Fisher considers hybridity in the guise of an imaginary dialogue with King Kong, while Hannah Hughes's visual essay explores the Polaroid photographs that Hoyland employed to help move his dramatic and powerful imagery between two and three dimensions.
Published in association with Slimvolume.
Contents
- John Hoyland's Ceramics: Throwing Wild Shapes - Andrew Hunt
- Constructing Painting, Imagining Sculpture: John Hoyland's Ceramics in Context - Sam Cornish
- Ceramic plates
-These Mad Hybrids: John Hoyland's Ceramics and Contemporary Sculpture - Olivia Bax
- Exhibition plates
- It was Beauty that Killed the Beast - James Fisher
- Shifting Surfaces: Selections from John Hoyland's Photographic Archive - Hannah Hughes
Artist Biographies
