{"id":2222,"date":"2019-10-07T08:27:58","date_gmt":"2019-10-07T08:27:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/instantloveland.com\/wp\/?p=2222"},"modified":"2019-10-07T08:28:01","modified_gmt":"2019-10-07T08:28:01","slug":"eye-opener-alexandra-harley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/instantloveland.com\/wp\/2019\/10\/07\/eye-opener-alexandra-harley\/","title":{"rendered":"Eye Opener: Alexandra Harley"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Sculptor Alexandra Harley tells how a trip to Stockwell Depot led to a close encounter with the ‘WOW!’<\/em> writ large…<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many, many years ago, I was a young and\nvery na\u00efve art student just starting out on my Foundation Course. I had arrived\nat Colchester School of Art with no real idea of what to expect; I hadn\u2019t done\nmuch art at school, for a start; and so I had a lot of catching up to do. I had\nenjoyed textiles at school and I expected to carry on where I had left off\u2026that\nis, until we did sculpture! It was a two-week module that I somehow extended\nuntil the end of the course. I was hooked. I had no idea what was going on or\nwhat I was doing, either; but I loved it. I relished the making and doing, so\nmuch so that I managed to block the plumbing with plaster, dug holes in the\ngrounds for firing clay, created clouds of dust, yet somehow managed not to lose\nany body parts using the tools and machinery- although I came pretty damn close.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Alexandra Harley, ‘Lledr’ (2016), ceramic, h19 cm<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Staff at Colchester at that time were a remarkable team and, very much like a Degree course, we had a stream of excellent visiting tutors.  Several were involved with the new, cutting-edge magazine \u2018Artscribe\u2019 <\/em>and the department was buzzing with the latest shows and talk of then-current artists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Someone- I am fairly certain it must have\nbeen the artist Ben Jones- suggested I should see a studio show at Stockwell\nDepot; so off I went. One look at the poster for the show, and then I set off\nfor the train, armed only with a vague sketch map and a few sandwiches. This\ncountry lass had no idea just how vast London was, even then; I pitched up at\nStockwell tube, fully expecting the locals to know where this artists\u2019 studio\nwas. Thankfully, during my wandering about I recognised the building from the\nposter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coming into the studios from the street was electrifying!<\/em> This was no white-walled gallery; this was real, this was a place where artists worked and I was in awe. The sculpture was unlike anything I had ever seen. The whole of my student days seemed to be a continuous state of \u2018wow, that\u2019s amazing, what is it?\u2019 <\/em>and this show was that \u2018WOW!\u2019<\/em> writ large. The use of metal was extraordinary: in Peter Hide\u2019s work, it was massive, chunky, laboriously cut with acetylene, and carried within it an overpowering sense of the exertions involved in its manipulation.  <\/em>I\u2019d had no idea that work like this existed. It all felt so right<\/em>: the improvised curving geometry and physical massiveness of Anthony Smart and Katherine Gili was utterly at odds with the flimsiness and stiffness of minimalism. It was dignified, self-assured, and so positive. I loved its exactness: everything in the right place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Peter Hide, ‘Zenith’ (1975), steel, h295 cm <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Anthony Smart, ‘Stirrup 3’ (1978), steel, dimensions pending<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Katherine Gili, ‘Blow’ (1978-9), mild steel, h164 cm<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I applied to Wimbledon School of Art, again\non the recommendation of Ben Jones. At that time, Wimbledon\u2019s sculpture\ndepartment was very much influenced by Caro, and male-dominated; apart from Gili\nI only remember one other female visiting lecturer, and the makeup of the student\nbody was predominantly male. The gender thing was an issue for all the female\nstudents. When I went for interview, the flyer for the Stockwell show was in my\nsketchbook, and this prompted the question: did I think that Katherine Gili should\nbe making different work from male sculptors? That is, sculpture that could be\nidentified as being made by a woman? I forget exactly how I answered, but I can\nstill recall what I thought at the time: that welded steel sculpture was far\ntoo heavy for any artist, male or<\/em>\nfemale, to manipulate without recourse to heavy lifting gear; and as such, it\nwas in no sense a male preserve; it was equally available- or otherwise- to\nboth sexes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Alexandra Harley, ‘Pirolo’ (2016), bronze on stone, h11 cm<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I had no desire then, and still do not now, to be defined as a woman artist, with any attendant patronisation. I wanted to be recognised for making good sculpture, regardless of the material I used. There were precious few women represented in galleries and the big institutions, and we all hoped that we would be \u2018the one\u2019<\/em> to be picked up by a gallery after college. This was a time before the internet and social media; and finding women artists in the art magazines was an extremely rare occurrence. Within a generation, Fine Art Departments (are there any Sculpture Departments left?)<\/em> have become far more gender balanced, as are the big institutions. I still believe it will take another generation for there to be parity; but times are changing, thankfully. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And on that very topic\u2026while I was at\nWimbledon, we heard the whispered rumours that were doing the rounds: at\nGoldsmiths, just up the road, the sculptors\u2019 favoured material was formaldehyde<\/em>. The YBA\u2019s had arrived, and\nchange was in the air. Nevertheless, the Stockwell Depot artists, painters and\nsculptors, (some of whom taught me at Wimbledon and subsequently at St Martins)\nthough no longer grabbing the headlines, have remained hugely influential for\nme personally; and, I would argue, for the wider art world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Alexandra Harley. ‘Kintinkiri’ (2016), bronze, h26 cm<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sculptor Alexandra Harley tells how a trip to Stockwell Depot led to a close encounter with the ‘WOW!’ writ large… Many, many years ago, I was a young and very na\u00efve art student just starting out on my Foundation Course. I had arrived at Colchester School of Art with no…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essay"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/instantloveland.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/instantloveland.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/instantloveland.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instantloveland.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instantloveland.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2222"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/instantloveland.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2248,"href":"https:\/\/instantloveland.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2222\/revisions\/2248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/instantloveland.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instantloveland.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instantloveland.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}