Statuephilia: Contemporary sculptors at the British Museum
Supported by Linklaters, The Henry Moore Foundation, Channel
4
4 October 2008 – 25 January 2009
Across the Museum
Admission free
The British Museum houses one of the greatest sculpture
collections in the world. This autumn, it will showcase a
group of major works by leading contemporary British artists in a
series of installations paying tribute to the cultural significance
of sculpture across the ages.
Works by Damien Hirst, Antony
Gormley, Ron Mueck, Marc
Quinn and Noble and Webster will
highlight the perennial potency of sculpture and remind visitors to
the Museum of the extraordinary unbroken history of this art form
and its unique relationship to human history.
Statuephilia complements a major new
television series on the history of sculpture, The Sculpture
Diaries, produced by ZCZ films and to be broadcast on Channel
4 in the autumn. Statuephilia has
been selected by Sunday Times art critic and presenter of the
Sculpture Diaries Waldemar Januszczak in association with
the British Museum.
Each work will be sited in a different gallery
within the Museum, located so as to create an arresting
juxtaposition with the stunning works that make up the Museum’s
permanent collection. For over 250 years, the collection has
been an inspiration for contemporary artists, providing a rare
opportunity to view sculpture from as far a field as Mexico, Easter
Island, Nigeria, Greece, North America, Polynesia, China and
India. Henry Moore famously declared ‘nine-tenths of my
understanding and learning about sculpture came from the British
Museum’. By providing a new context for outstanding examples
of contemporary sculpture the project will facilitate visual
dialogue with traditions from different eras and encourage the
public to engage with them in novel ways.
Damien Hirst will commandeer
the historic wall cases of the Enlightenment Gallery and fill them
with 200 specially created skulls. The resulting work,
Cornucopia, will address Hirst’s perennial fascination
with death, while also commenting on the very legitimacy of
collection and display. These objects are the first of their kind
for Hirst, and will premiere at the British Museum.
Antony Gormley’s Case for an Angel I – a
precursor to his most celebrated public sculpture, Angel of the
North – will fill the entire Front Hall of the Museum. Raised
high on a plinth, and boasting a 9-metre wingspan, it is itself
monumental, and will provide clear links with the Egyptian,
Assyrian and Classical statuary that the Museum holds in abundance,
and inspired Gormley to become a sculptor in the first place.
Antony Gormley is a Trustee of the British Museum.
Ron Mueck will show Mask II, his widely
exhibited sleeping Self-Portrait, in the heart of the ‘Living and
Dying: Wellcome Trust Gallery’ with the Museum’s monumental Maoi.
The giant head, lying on its side, brings to mind Easter Island’s
mysterious history, only recently solved after two centuries of
speculation.
Marc Quinn’s solid gold statue, Siren, of
supermodel Kate Moss – icon of contemporary beauty and Aphrodite of
our times – will find fitting setting at the centre of the Nereid
Gallery, interacting with the great Greek beauties that surround
it. Quinn’s work is the largest gold statue since Ancient Egypt and
will premiere at the Museum.
Noble and
Webster have sculpted an entirely new phantasmagoric
silhouette work inspired by the surroundings of the Museum’s
world-renowned Egyptian Sculpture Gallery. “The work is assembled
from our collection of naturally mummified animal
parts, tiny little creatures teased and tortured by our feral
farmyard cat, that when assembled will cast a shadow of our
profiles onto the walls of the ancient Egyptian galleries”.
Philip Attwood, coordinator
of Modern Collections at the British Museum:
“Perhaps because the British
Museum is often celebrated as a museum of antiquities, it is not
always realised that its collections also include a broad range of
contemporary works from around the world.
Ever since its foundation in 1753,
the Museum has acquired modern material alongside objects from
ancient times, and this exhibition is a demonstration of the power
of this duality.”
Waldemar Januszczak, Sunday
Times art critic, presenter of The Sculpture Diaries and
co-curator of Statuephilia:
“The series and this project are
united in their ambition. In both cases, across both media, the
desire is to highlight sculpture's unceasing potency.
Statuephilia will bring together a group
of modern sculptors, all of whom have prowled through the corridors
and display cabinets of the British Museum in their formative years
looking at sculpture and feeling its unmatched international
potency. The British Museum helped to make these artists what they
are. Now they are seeking to return the favour.”
Participating artist Antony
Gormley:
“The British Museum is a
laboratory of possibility for any creative mind. It is filled with
objects that reach across time and touch us intimately. Seeing as a
child the great head of Rameses and the Assyrian winged bulls at
the BM was what made me become a sculptor.”
Jan
Younghusband, Commissioning Editor Arts and
Performance, Channel 4:
“We are delighted to sponsor this
unique exhibition to mark the broadcast of the Sculpture Diaries
Series.
Our ongoing partnership with the
British Museum is a great inspiration to our work.”
The Museum’s Prints and Drawings collection
includes various works by some of the same artists taking part in
Statuephilia, notably a selection of
drawings and a series of prints by Antony Gormley and a study for a
sculpture by Marc Quinn. These works, together with a selection of
about 80 drawings from the Museum’s Prints and Drawings collection,
will go on display from 25 September 2008 to 25 January 2009 in an
exhibition entitled British Sculptors’ Drawings: Moore
to Gormley.
A public programme featuring late openings,
debates, lunchtime lectures, gallery talks and screenings of
Channel 4’s Sculpture Diaries series will complement the
show throughout its duration.
For more information and images please
contact:
Maria Marques
020 7936 1290
britishmuseum@brunswickgroup.com
Hannah Boulton
020 7323 8522
communications@britishmuseum.org
For information on The Sculpture Diaries
television series please contact:
Matthew Robinson
07909 684 746
mr.pr@virgin.net