Garth Evans is a sculptor as capable of evoking
Project Director of the digital research project
intimacy and simplicity as he is of dealing with
Garth Evans Sculpture Beneath the Skin
Ann Compton (ed.) is the originator and Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851–1951 (sculpture. gla.ac.uk). She has written widely on British painting and sculpture, particularly of the twentieth century, and her publications include The Sculpture of Charles Sargeant Jagger (2004). She is an Honorary Fellow in the School of Culture and Creative Arts, University of Glasgow and a Visiting Scholar at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Prior to moving into research, Compton worked as a curator at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, the Imperial War Museum, London, and University of Liverpool.
the monumental and the timeless. This complete survey of his unique career is long overdue, and reveals a wealth of innovative and powerful work, much of it previously unseen in print. As narratives
Garth Evans Sculpture
of British sculpture are reconsidered, Evans is
Beneath the Skin
and Philip King with that of Tony Cragg, Richard
emerging as one of the most creative and influential artists to bridge the generation of Antony Caro Deacon, Antony Gormley, Alison Wilding and Bill Woodrow. This investigation into Evans’s hugely varied, visually eventful and challenging practice explores connections across geographies and timeframes as well as contextualizing major changes and new departures in his work. Garth Evans was born in Manchester in 1934 and settled in the USA at the midpoint of his career. He has exhibited widely in Europe and America since the early 1960s, and his work is represented in major public and private collections in Australia, Brazil, Portugal, the USA and the UK (including the Arts Council Collection, Leeds City Art Galleries,The British Museum, the V&A and Tate).
Edited by Ann Compton
Philip Wilson Publishers an imprint of I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd 6 Salem Road London W2 4BU www.philip-wilson.co.uk
02_Garth_Evans_Front_Cover_FINAL_V.5.indd 1
ISBN 978-1-78130-004-6
9 781781 300046
Evans has been the recipient of numerous awards as well as holding a number of distinguished teaching positions. Since 1988, he has taught at the Studio School in New York City where he is Head of Sculpture.
Front cover: Untitled No. 1, 1974. Photograph by Anna Arca, courtesy Arts Council Collection Back cover: Little Dancer No. 84, 2003–8 Inside covers: Four Bodies, installed at Lori Bookstein Gallery, New York, 2006. Photograph by Jerry L. Thompson
18/12/2012 19:04
Garth Evans Sculpture Beneath the Skin
© the authors 2013 Published by Philip Wilson Publishers an imprint of I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd 6 Salem Road London W2 4BU www.philip-wilson.co.uk
Contents
ISBN 978-1-78130-004-6 Distributed in the United States and Canada exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
Designed by Pippa Kate Bridle
7
Preface and Acknowledgements
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior permission of the publishers.
Author Biographies
8
Penelope Curtis Introduction
10
Printed and bound in China by Everbest This book was published to coincide with Garth Evans, an Arts Council Collection exhibition curated by Richard Deacon, Longside Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 22 March – 28 April 2013
Jon Wood The Sculpture of Garth Evans: Jon Wood in conversation with the artist Richard Deacon
Localized changes of condition
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36
David Hulks Breakdown: analysis of a crisis in the work of Garth Evans 52 Rhona Warwick Closing the Gap: Garth Evans and the interstitial spaces between decision and execution 70 Anna Lovatt The Migration of Meaning: Garth Evans’ Sculpture of the 1980s 86 Michael Brenson Dramas of Desire and Disorder: the Yaddo Drawings of Garth Evans 126 Leila Philip Geography of the Imagination: biography of a studio 142 Ann Compton In the beginning... 168 Notes 174 Garth Evans Archival texts 178 Caption note: All the works are in the artist's collection unless otherwise stated. Metric dimensions (height x width x depth) are given first, followed by measurements in inches (or a few instances in feet).
Chronology 209
Bibliography 213
Exhibitions 217
Localized changes of condition Richard Deacon
It was a catastrophe which gave a wrong direction to all medieval thought and threw it out of its course when, owing to the Renaissance, thought, which till then had been an end in itself, was degraded to a mere means to an end, namely, the knowledge of external scientific truth, when the purpose of knowledge became everything and the process of knowledge nothing. Thought then lost its abstract autonomy and became a servant: it became the slave of truth ... In short, it was condemned to be a mere intellectual copy of the true, that is to say, of objective facts – like the line in painting, which also had once lived by its own particular expression alone, and now, in the same circumstances, also lost its arabesque existence to become a limiting outline, a reproduction of the world of natural forms, a mere handmaid of the objective...
– Wilhelm Worringer, Form in Gothic3
I first met, or at least saw, Garth Evans on 22 September 1969. Garth was one of a quartet of lecturers at St. Martin’s School of Art (the others being Peter Kardia, Peter Harvey and Gareth Jones) who had drawn up a radical new course for the first year sculpture school intake. Garth was there that morning, along with Gareth Jones, to induct us, the selected group of first years into that course. There was an air of some curiosity and expectancy. On arrival at Detail: Untitled No. 38, 1967–68, fiberglass, pigment, 182.8 x 61 x 61 (each element 72 x 24 x 24)
St. Martin’s, the incoming sculpture students had been directed to the A2 studio. One end of this large and, at that
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Garth Evans Sculpture – Beneath the Skin
Localized changes of condition
time empty, studio was closed off by a barrier of wooden
I took my cube, placed it by the card containing my name
occasionally seemed, either vulnerable or insecure and thus
screens. On the left-hand side of this screen wall was a
and sat down on it.
a potential target. (In an effort to construct an explanation
padlocked door with a notice pinned to it saying ‘PROJECT
39
for what was happening our participation was sometimes
AREA. KNOCK BEFORE ENTERING.’ Sculpture students
It was not stated, but the material provided changed sporad-
an attempt to undermine.) Garth remained inscrutable, but
from all three years of the diploma course assembled in the
ically – evidence of the previous encounter being removed
clearly attentive and engaged – as the suppressed passion of
room, those returning talking, those new sitting or standing,
and, presumably, destroyed. The supplied materials were:
his opening remarks had revealed. It was a complex position
mostly silent. At about 10.15 two men came into the studio
which nevertheless commanded respect.
both wearing name badges – Garth Evans and Gareth Jones.
Polystyrene (and brown paper)
The first year students were asked to return at 11.20.
Kraft paper
Looking back I see in Garth a natural observer – open
String
and curious, slow to form judgements. Over time, in other
At the appointed time we gathered in the studio. Garth
Plaster and water
contexts, it became clear that a part of his teaching method
Evans and Gareth Jones reappeared. Gareth held a
Stopwatch
lay in his being able to observe and to make deductions from
small box of name badges. He picked these out one at a
The Manydeed Group (Richard Deacon, top left, and Garth Evans, middle row right), 1972 Next spread: Babar, 1965, fiberglass, pigment, 81.3 x 584.2 x 43.2 (32 x 230 x 17), Paul Minyo, Courtesy of Poussin Gallery, London
those observations. In his studio practice I think that Garth
We became an awkward and demanding year group.
time, reading the written name aloud and giving it to the
This first project lasted twenty-four days. Further projects,
accepts that the activity of art making is rule bound as a
During our third year we began meeting regularly to discuss
responding student. All having received badges, Garth read
with variations in the rules, were introduced throughout
state of things rather than the consequences of authority.
collective actions and to think about how we might continue
an introduction to the project from a piece of paper that he
the year. The project area was only used during the
In other words he embraces such constraints as the
to be together after graduation. This loose discussion
held in his hand. In this statement he emphasized that the
project periods, outside of those times it was locked and
number, type and size of modules in a work, the demands
group slowly formalized into a limited company called The
project would be demanding and require self discipline on
inaccessible. During the projects at least one of the four
and limitations of materials (only this or only that) as well as
Manydeed Group, with the objectives of being a mechanism
the part of the students to make it successful. His hands
members of staff was always present. No one ever told
the starting conditions of the genre and discipline (such as
to provide mutual support and a public face or umbrella for
shook as he read. The door to the project area was then
us what to do, but, more importantly no one ever told us
wall relief, three-dimensional figure, portrait). Garth equally
our activities. Peter Harvey, Gareth Jones, Peter Kardia and
unlocked, Garth and Gareth entered followed, one at a
what not to do and we were never ignored or not attended
strongly rejects external voices dictating concept, image or
Garth Evans, who had now become known as ‘Group A’
time, by the students. As each entered they were handed,
to. In retrospect, I realize that it is relatively easy to teach
process (this or that form, this or that technique etc.). In
staff, had resumed their tutorial contacts and initiated some
from piles either side of the door, a cube of 20 inches on
people what to do but it is enormously difficult to place
the intense teaching situation of that first year course at
further projects with us during that final year. Although
the side wrapped in brown paper. The project area was
someone in a position where they can learn what not to do
St. Martin’s Garth’s clear acceptance of the rules of the role
we knew they were aware of our regular meetings, it was
bare of furniture save for notices pinned at various points to
for themselves rather than through a prescribed process.
he had been instrumental in building and his wide-eyed
nevertheless unexpected when The Manydeed Group
the walls and saying ‘No drawing or writing materials to be
However, if this can be achieved the benefit is the great gift
curiosity about where that would take him, and us, were,
received a formal application from all four ‘Group A’ staff
used’; ‘Punctuality is essential’; ‘No verbal communication
of ‘what to do’ becoming an arena of endless possibility.
perhaps, what we understood. Neither an authoritarian
to join. Given the sustained and formative intensity of our
imposition nor a misunderstood friendship, but just how
contacts, it’s perhaps not so surprising, some might say a
it was in that situation at that time.
variant of the Stockholm Syndrome was in play. In any case
between students’; ‘Verbal communication is allowed between individual student and member of staff’; ‘The
Throughout the ‘A Course’ (as it has become known) Garth
project area will be open 10.00 – 11.00, 11.20 – 1.00, 2.00 –
was hard to read. He never frightened or overawed us as Peter
3.00, 3.20 – 4.30’. Pieces of card pinned at various points to
Kardia’s intense and commanding presence sometimes
The rigours of that first year course produced, quite
an appropriate development so, after some discussion, the
the floor each contained the name of an individual student.
could nor did he appear, as Gareth Jones and Peter Harvey
naturally, a strong sense of solidarity amongst us students.
four were welcomed into the group.
there were undoubtedly strong connections and it seemed
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Garth Evans Sculpture – Beneath the Skin
Localized changes of condition
Post St. Martin’s, The Manydeed Group met weekly
by Cézanne or Giacometti as it is of Mbuti bark cloth images
and, apart from complex and arcane issues of our own
from Zaire, Yuan dynasty bowls, or Bruce Nauman videos.
governance, the substantive problem we faced was finding
There is also a sense in which the recognition of pattern
somewhere to work. Here Garth proved invaluable. He had
(a fundamental part of perceptual processes) has to do
relocated his studio several times and was very connected
with the application of acquired, or given, rules. Although I
to the mass of artists jostling for affordable space in the
did not learn this from Garth, as I began to see more of his
bleak and straitened property market of 1970s London.
work in the context of our developing friendship, something
It was Garth who provided the contact and made the
which might at some time have seemed wayward, quirky or
introductions that led us to a church hall (a former primary
even downright stubborn became compelling.
school building) in Baldwins Gardens, just off Chancery Lane, where the high ceilinged fourth floor assembly room
One of the first (two) sculptures by Garth that I saw was
had long stood empty. Garth and I met the verger, Miss
Babar (1965).4 Exhibited in Bristol in the summer of 1968 in a
Nesbitt, a crop-headed and engagingly sprightly woman
show titled New British Sculpture/Bristol. In the accompanying
in her late sixties, many times prior to signing a lease on
catalogue, a photograph by Derek Balmer shows the
the space. It was also Garth who helped with getting small
work behind a prominent ‘No Entry’ sign being quizzically
grants for paint, for a skip to clear the rubbish into and for
examined by two parking attendants (as if about to issue a
small propane heaters and the deposit on (much larger)
ticket). So the attribution of a stubborn, quirky waywardness
gas cylinders. These were greatly needed as the hall was
does not seem unjustified. In the accompanying statement
woefully under heated. A large, pot-bellied Victorian cast-
Garth says:
iron stove could, with continued stoking, be made to glow almost red with no discernible benefit (sweeping the floor
The obvious theme of these sculptures concerns the local
was a more effective method of warming up, though the
softening and distortion of hard forms. It should be clear that
benefits were short lived). In trying to find a way for us to
they are in no way portraits of events – they do not attempt
show something of Manydeed’s collective activities and to
a representation of what would have happened to the forms
help us to transition to another plane in the art world, Garth
concerned if they had been treated in the way described. In
used his position to bring us to the attention of curators and
fact these sculptures originated conceptually as structures
art officers. Garth showed an unusual collegiality towards
related to ideas about and sensations of events rather than
us as artists, treating us as neither more nor less than equal.
their appearance.
As my own practice has developed I have come to realize
In other words he reminds us that although it is relatively
that one of the ways to make art is to apply (selected) rules
simple to say what it is that these sculptures resemble,
and deal with their consequences. I think this is as true of
that resemblance is misleading. The phrase ‘structures
the welter of marks that build up on the surface of a painting
related to ideas about’ implies a studied distancing from
Babar, on cover of new British sculpture/Bristol, courtesy of Derek Balmer and Arnolfini, Bristol
43
44
Garth Evans Sculpture – Beneath the Skin
St. Mary’s No. 1, 1978, welded polythene sheet, 8.5 x 307.3 x 314 (11.4 x 121 x 123.5), Arts Council Collection, installed at Longside gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Photograph by Anna Arca, courtesy Arts Council Collection
Localized changes of condition
45
appearances whilst using the constraint of a particular
our neural networks. This constant state of ever shifting
imagined condition, ‘local softening’, to generate con-
electrical activity corresponds to our perceptions of and
sequences. In helping to select an exhibition of Garth’s
ratiocinations about our internal and external worlds as
work held at Longside Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park in
they change, and our behaviour as it develops; the motley
2013 it was noticeable that such local softening, the sensory
palimpsest of our lives. One of the many remarkable things
impact of imagined or enacted area-specific changes of
about this barrage of neural activity is its consistency from
condition on structural form, had been a consistent device
moment to moment, minute to minute, hour by hour, day by
in Garth’s methods – the use and limitations of the linear
day. It is an extremely stable system. I have often thought
polythene welder in making St. Mary’s No. 1 (1974–75) being
that the reason people have, since pre-history, always liked
a particularly clear example. The distinction between
taking mind altering substances and pursuing extreme
the purpose of knowledge and the process of knowledge
behaviours of many sorts, is not so much to do with insight
that Worringer points to in the paragraph quoted at the
or with forgetfulness but to do with the sheer enjoyment
beginning of this essay is apropos. There is no empiricism
of experiencing the creative and particular ways in which
or testing of results, the work is autonomous, an ‘end in
the disrupted system restores balance and re-establishes
itself’ living ‘by its own particular expression’. When Garth,
that consistency, however much it may fly in the face of
on behalf of his colleagues, introduced the ‘A Course’, he
knowledge, expectation or experience. This is, in part,
wasn’t starting an experiment, he was opening a door.
the deep pleasure that arises for me in looking at much of Garth’s work, that from a disrupted or enfeebled system, he
We build our perceptions of the world through the firing
develops and sustains a process that conjures non-rational
of millions of neurons and their associated synapses in
or creative products that are, nevertheless, consistent.
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Garth Evans Sculpture – Beneath the Skin
Works 1964–68
Tilt, 1964, fiberglass, paint, 101.5 x 127 x 43.2 (40 x 50 x 17), private collection
Counterfeit, 1964, fiberglass, paint, 152.4 x 152.4 x 12 (60 x 60 x 28), Leicestershire Education Authority
Eclipse, 1965, fiberglass, pigment, 55.9 x 182.8 x 182.8 (22 x 72 x 72), Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia
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48
Garth Evans Sculpture – Beneath the Skin
Works 1964–68
Untitled No. 37, 1967, fiberglass, paint, 185.4 x 320 x 274.3 (73 x 126 x 108), private collection
Maid of Honour, 1965, fiberglass, paint, 281 x 45.7 x 45.7 (111 x 18 x 18), private collection
Untitled No. 38, 1967–68, fiberglass, pigment, 182.8 x 61 x 61 (each element 72 x 24 x 24)
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Garth Evans Sculpture – Beneath the Skin
Works 1964–68
Untitled No. 39, 1967–68, fiberglass, paint, 213.3 x 309.8 x 243.8 x 20.3 (84 x 122 x 96 x 8), private collection
Untitled No. 40, 1968, aluminium, paint, 203.2 x 198.1 x 243.8 (80 x 78 x 96), Hirshorn Museum, Washington D.C.
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