garth evans sculpture: beneath the skin

Garth Evans Sculpture Beneath the Skin

Garth Evans is a sculptor as capable of evoking

intimacy and simplicity as he is of dealing with

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

of British sculpture are reconsidered, Evans is

emerging as one of the most creative and influential

artists to bridge the generation of Antony Caro

and Philip King with that of Tony Cragg, Richard

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).

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.

Ann Compton (ed.) is the originator and

Project Director of the digital research project

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 in-

clude 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.

Philip Wilson Publishersan imprint of I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd6 Salem RoadLondon W2 4BUwww.philip-wilson.co.uk

Front cover: Untitled No. 1, 1974. Photograph by Anna Arca, courtesy Arts Council Collection Back cover: Little Dancer No. 84, 2003–8Inside covers: Four Bodies, installed at Lori Bookstein Gallery, New York, 2006. Photograph by Jerry L. Thompson9 781781 300046

ISBN 978-1-78130-004-6G

arth E

vans Scu

lpture Beneath

the Skin

Edited

by Ann

Com

pton

02_Garth_Evans_Front_Cover_FINAL_V.5.indd 1 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 Ltd6 Salem RoadLondon W2 4BUwww.philip-wilson.co.uk

ISBN 978-1-78130-004-6

Distributed in the United States and Canadaexclusively by Palgrave Macmillan175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010

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.

Designed by Pippa Kate Bridle

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

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).

Preface and Acknowledgements 7

Author Biographies 8

Penelope Curtis Introduction 10

Jon Wood The Sculpture of Garth Evans: Jon Wood in conversation with the artist 16

Richard Deacon Localized changes of condition 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

Chronology 209 Bibliography 213 Exhibitions 217

Contents

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

St. Martin’s, the incoming sculpture students had been

directed to the A2 studio. One end of this large and, at that Detail: Untitled No. 38, 1967–68, fiberglass, pigment, 182.8 x 61 x 61 (each element 72 x 24 x 24)

Localized changes of conditionRichard Deacon

Garth Evans Sculpture – Beneath the Skin Localized changes of condition38 39

time empty, studio was closed off by a barrier of wooden

screens. On the left-hand side of this screen wall was a

padlocked door with a notice pinned to it saying ‘PROJECT

AREA. KNOCK BEFORE ENTERING.’ Sculpture students

from all three years of the diploma course assembled in the

room, those returning talking, those new sitting or standing,

mostly silent. At about 10.15 two men came into the studio

both wearing name badges – Garth Evans and Gareth Jones.

The first year students were asked to return at 11.20.

At the appointed time we gathered in the studio. Garth

Evans and Gareth Jones reappeared. Gareth held a

small box of name badges. He picked these out one at a

time, reading the written name aloud and giving it to the

responding student. All having received badges, Garth read

an introduction to the project from a piece of paper that he

held in his hand. In this statement he emphasized that the

project would be demanding and require self discipline on

the part of the students to make it successful. His hands

shook as he read. The door to the project area was then

unlocked, Garth and Gareth entered followed, one at a

time, by the students. As each entered they were handed,

from piles either side of the door, a cube of 20 inches on

the side wrapped in brown paper. The project area was

bare of furniture save for notices pinned at various points to

the walls and saying ‘No drawing or writing materials to be

used’; ‘Punctuality is essential’; ‘No verbal communication

between students’; ‘Verbal communication is allowed

between individual student and member of staff’; ‘The

project area will be open 10.00 – 11.00, 11.20 – 1.00, 2.00 –

3.00, 3.20 – 4.30’. Pieces of card pinned at various points to

the floor each contained the name of an individual student.

I took my cube, placed it by the card containing my name

and sat down on it.

It was not stated, but the material provided changed sporad-

ically – evidence of the previous encounter being removed

and, presumably, destroyed. The supplied materials were:

Polystyrene (and brown paper)

Kraft paper

String

Plaster and water

Stopwatch

This first project lasted twenty-four days. Further projects,

with variations in the rules, were introduced throughout

the year. The project area was only used during the

project periods, outside of those times it was locked and

inaccessible. During the projects at least one of the four

members of staff was always present. No one ever told

us what to do, but, more importantly no one ever told us

what not to do and we were never ignored or not attended

to. In retrospect, I realize that it is relatively easy to teach

people what to do but it is enormously difficult to place

someone in a position where they can learn what not to do

for themselves rather than through a prescribed process.

However, if this can be achieved the benefit is the great gift

of ‘what to do’ becoming an arena of endless possibility.

Throughout the ‘A Course’ (as it has become known) Garth

was hard to read. He never frightened or overawed us as Peter

Kardia’s intense and commanding presence sometimes

could nor did he appear, as Gareth Jones and Peter Harvey

occasionally seemed, either vulnerable or insecure and thus

a potential target. (In an effort to construct an explanation

for what was happening our participation was sometimes

an attempt to undermine.) Garth remained inscrutable, but

clearly attentive and engaged – as the suppressed passion of

his opening remarks had revealed. It was a complex position

which nevertheless commanded respect.

Looking back I see in Garth a natural observer – open

and curious, slow to form judgements. Over time, in other

contexts, it became clear that a part of his teaching method

lay in his being able to observe and to make deductions from

those observations. In his studio practice I think that Garth

accepts that the activity of art making is rule bound as a

state of things rather than the consequences of authority.

In other words he embraces such constraints as the

number, type and size of modules in a work, the demands

and limitations of materials (only this or only that) as well as

the starting conditions of the genre and discipline (such as

wall relief, three-dimensional figure, portrait). Garth equally

strongly rejects external voices dictating concept, image or

process (this or that form, this or that technique etc.). In

the intense teaching situation of that first year course at

St. Martin’s Garth’s clear acceptance of the rules of the role

he had been instrumental in building and his wide-eyed

curiosity about where that would take him, and us, were,

perhaps, what we understood. Neither an authoritarian

imposition nor a misunderstood friendship, but just how

it was in that situation at that time.

The rigours of that first year course produced, quite

naturally, a strong sense of solidarity amongst us students.

We became an awkward and demanding year group.

During our third year we began meeting regularly to discuss

collective actions and to think about how we might continue

to be together after graduation. This loose discussion

group slowly formalized into a limited company called The

Manydeed Group, with the objectives of being a mechanism

to provide mutual support and a public face or umbrella for

our activities. Peter Harvey, Gareth Jones, Peter Kardia and

Garth Evans, who had now become known as ‘Group A’

staff, had resumed their tutorial contacts and initiated some

further projects with us during that final year. Although

we knew they were aware of our regular meetings, it was

nevertheless unexpected when The Manydeed Group

received a formal application from all four ‘Group A’ staff

to join. Given the sustained and formative intensity of our

contacts, it’s perhaps not so surprising, some might say a

variant of the Stockholm Syndrome was in play. In any case

there were undoubtedly strong connections and it seemed

an appropriate development so, after some discussion, the

four were welcomed into the group.

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


Post St. Martin’s, The Manydeed Group met weekly

and, apart from complex and arcane issues of our own

governance, the substantive problem we faced was finding

somewhere to work. Here Garth proved invaluable. He had

relocated his studio several times and was very connected

to the mass of artists jostling for affordable space in the

bleak and straitened property market of 1970s London.

It was Garth who provided the contact and made the

introductions that led us to a church hall (a former primary

school building) in Baldwins Gardens, just off Chancery

Lane, where the high ceilinged fourth floor assembly room

had long stood empty. Garth and I met the verger, Miss

Nesbitt, a crop-headed and engagingly sprightly woman

in her late sixties, many times prior to signing a lease on

the space. It was also Garth who helped with getting small

grants for paint, for a skip to clear the rubbish into and for

small propane heaters and the deposit on (much larger)

gas cylinders. These were greatly needed as the hall was

woefully under heated. A large, pot-bellied Victorian cast-

iron stove could, with continued stoking, be made to glow

almost red with no discernible benefit (sweeping the floor

was a more effective method of warming up, though the

benefits were short lived). In trying to find a way for us to

show something of Manydeed’s collective activities and to

help us to transition to another plane in the art world, Garth

used his position to bring us to the attention of curators and

art officers. Garth showed an unusual collegiality towards

us as artists, treating us as neither more nor less than equal.

As my own practice has developed I have come to realize

that one of the ways to make art is to apply (selected) rules

and deal with their consequences. I think this is as true of

the welter of marks that build up on the surface of a painting

by Cézanne or Giacometti as it is of Mbuti bark cloth images

from Zaire, Yuan dynasty bowls, or Bruce Nauman videos.

There is also a sense in which the recognition of pattern

(a fundamental part of perceptual processes) has to do

with the application of acquired, or given, rules. Although I

did not learn this from Garth, as I began to see more of his

work in the context of our developing friendship, something

which might at some time have seemed wayward, quirky or

even downright stubborn became compelling.

One of the first (two) sculptures by Garth that I saw was

Babar (1965).4 Exhibited in Bristol in the summer of 1968 in a

show titled New British Sculpture/Bristol. In the accompanying

catalogue, a photograph by Derek Balmer shows the

work behind a prominent ‘No Entry’ sign being quizzically

examined by two parking attendants (as if about to issue a

ticket). So the attribution of a stubborn, quirky waywardness

does not seem unjustified. In the accompanying statement

Garth says:

The obvious theme of these sculptures concerns the local

softening and distortion of hard forms. It should be clear that

they are in no way portraits of events – they do not attempt

a representation of what would have happened to the forms

concerned if they had been treated in the way described. In

fact these sculptures originated conceptually as structures

related to ideas about and sensations of events rather than

their appearance.

In other words he reminds us that although it is relatively

simple to say what it is that these sculptures resemble,

that resemblance is misleading. The phrase ‘structures

related to ideas about’ implies a studied distancing from

Babar, on cover of new British sculpture/Bristol, courtesy of Derek Balmer and Arnolfini, Bristol


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

appearances whilst using the constraint of a particular

imagined condition, ‘local softening’, to generate con-

sequences. In helping to select an exhibition of Garth’s

work held at Longside Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park in

2013 it was noticeable that such local softening, the sensory

impact of imagined or enacted area-specific changes of

condition on structural form, had been a consistent device

in Garth’s methods – the use and limitations of the linear

polythene welder in making St. Mary’s No. 1 (1974–75) being

a particularly clear example. The distinction between

the purpose of knowledge and the process of knowledge

that Worringer points to in the paragraph quoted at the

beginning of this essay is apropos. There is no empiricism

or testing of results, the work is autonomous, an ‘end in

itself’ living ‘by its own particular expression’. When Garth,

on behalf of his colleagues, introduced the ‘A Course’, he

wasn’t starting an experiment, he was opening a door.

We build our perceptions of the world through the firing

of millions of neurons and their associated synapses in

our neural networks. This constant state of ever shifting

electrical activity corresponds to our perceptions of and

ratiocinations about our internal and external worlds as

they change, and our behaviour as it develops; the motley

palimpsest of our lives. One of the many remarkable things

about this barrage of neural activity is its consistency from

moment to moment, minute to minute, hour by hour, day by

day. It is an extremely stable system. I have often thought

that the reason people have, since pre-history, always liked

taking mind altering substances and pursuing extreme

behaviours of many sorts, is not so much to do with insight

or with forgetfulness but to do with the sheer enjoyment

of experiencing the creative and particular ways in which

the disrupted system restores balance and re-establishes

that consistency, however much it may fly in the face of

knowledge, expectation or experience. This is, in part,

the deep pleasure that arises for me in looking at much of

Garth’s work, that from a disrupted or enfeebled system, he

develops and sustains a process that conjures non-rational

or creative products that are, nevertheless, consistent.

Garth Evans Sculpture – Beneath the Skin46 Works 1964–68 47

Eclipse, 1965, fiberglass, pigment, 55.9 x 182.8 x 182.8 (22 x 72 x 72), Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia

Counterfeit, 1964, fiberglass, paint, 152.4 x 152.4 x 12 (60 x 60 x 28),Leicestershire Education Authority

Tilt, 1964, fiberglass, paint, 101.5 x 127 x 43.2 (40 x 50 x 17), private collection

Garth Evans Sculpture – Beneath the Skin48 Works 1964–68 49

Untitled No. 37, 1967, fiberglass, paint, 185.4 x 320 x 274.3 (73 x 126 x 108), private collection

Untitled No. 38, 1967–68, fiberglass, pigment, 182.8 x 61 x 61 (each element 72 x 24 x 24)Maid of Honour, 1965, fiberglass, paint, 281 x 45.7 x 45.7 (111 x 18 x 18), private collection

Garth Evans Sculpture – Beneath the Skin Works 1964–6850 51

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.

garth evans sculpture: beneath the skin

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