Breaking the Mould is the first extensive survey of post-war British sculpture by women in a public institution. Spanning more than seventy years and exploring the work of fifty sculptors, this exhibition provides a radical recalibration, addressing the many accounts of British sculpture that have marginalised women or airbrushed their work out of the art historical canon altogether.
The exhibition opens at Longside Gallery at Yorkshire Sculpture Park (4 April – 14 June 2020, then tours the UK) and comprises just over fifty works ranging from sculpture to installation in a wide-ranging list of materials including hair, ceramic, paper, flowers and salt. All of the works in this exhibition have been selected from the Arts Council Collection, which holds more than 250 sculptures by over 150 women. The selected works highlight the Collection’s long-term commitment to women working in sculpture and the strength and diversity of a wide range of practices. Many of the represented artists have challenged ingrained notions of sculpture as a ‘male occupation’ by embracing new materials, subjects and approaches. Others have avoided institutional bias by producing work for alternative spaces or the public domain.
The first work by a sculptor to be purchased for the Collection was a drawing by Barbara Hepworth, Reconstruction (1947), which is included in the exhibition alongside her wooden sculpture Icon, 1957. Since then, sculpture by women has been consistently acquired for the Collection. There are several new acquisitions from the Collection which are being displayed to the public for the very first time in this exhibition, these include Katie Cuddon’s A Problem of Departure, 2013, a ceramic sculpture of a pillow clasped between dimpled thighs; as well as Rose Finn-Kelcey’s God's Bog, 2001, a toilet cast in Jesmonite curling delicately like a seashell. The exhibition also offers an opportunity to see several works that have not been on public display for some time, including works by Wendy Taylor and Sokari Douglas Camp.