shadows of the wanderer

ANA MARIA PACHECO

Shadows of the Wanderer

A N A M A R I A PAC H E C O

I n memor y o f Bar to lomeu dos Santos

A N A M A R I A PAC H E C O


29 October - 23 December 2010

St John’s Church Waterloo

Waterloo Road, London SE1 8TY

17 January - 27 May 2011

Studio 3 Gallery, The Jarman Building

University of Kent, Canterbury CT2 7UG

Ana Maria Pacheco’s sculpture is the opposite of effigy. Unlike a waxwork, which may fool

us for an instant before it becomes uncannily lifeless under our gaze, her figures grow

inwardly in our imagination over time, acquiring life . To mention effigies at all, however, is

to acknowledge that there is some ground here for comparison: Shadows of the Wanderer

is typical of Pacheco’s sculpture in being fleshed and clothed with colour, and in bearing

facsimile eyes, embedded teeth. Yet here both practice and effect are wholly different

from what would apply with the inanimate waxen double of a film star or a politician; we

could not possibly mistake the eyes of her anonymous and strangely-propor tioned beings

for actual persons, but they genuinely carr y, for us, the sense of seeing, as no waxwork

ever can.

It is a notable fact that in contemporary ar t the effigy (cast, moulded, modelled, preserved,

‘plasticated’) has become vir tually an obligatory mode for representing human beings

(and animals) in three dimensions. Most contemporary figure sculpture is closer to the

waxwork than it is to the religious or myth-inspired sculpture of former times, other

cultures. In the first case, we may see an uncanny reflection of ourselves, lacking only life; in

the second, a thing other to ourselves, reflecting back to us a different aliveness. Ana Maria

Pacheco’s sculptures are contemporary precisely in addressing this modern difficulty in

imagining life , which in turn arises from a difficulty (much dwelt on by a ver y different

contemporary ar tist) in imagining death. Imagining death, the burden of mor tality, is what

she ventures here.

Pacheco has looked to past ar t for help in her present quest. There are Renaissance

and Baroque precedents for the inter twining of bodies at the centre of Shadows of the

Wanderer, and the polychrome religious sculpture of her native Brazil has often been

invoked as a general source of inspiration. Yet it would be a mistake to see her work as

a summation of these and other precedents, for it operates strictly in terms that belong

to the present.

Her technique, for example, is quite untraditional, though in its own terms highly exacting.

It is by luring us with the fascination of the worked-upon that the sculptures invite us

to come close. Pacheco carves and abrades the wood into body-like contours, which

she then gives a flesh of variegated hue. This she does by blending an emulsion on the

surface, working rapidly with (of all implements) cotton buds. She has visited every square

In the Region of Shadows

Brendan Prendevi l le

centimetre in order that we, in turn, may pay close attention and, in giving our time, impar t

duration and life to what we see. What we do see, looking closely and standing back again,

is a figure (or figures) whose being is concentrated in a single gesture of the whole body,

and given its intensest focus in the face. Notice how often in her work she pulls heads

down onto or even a bit below the shoulders, closely binding together the expressive and

active regions of the body.

We may feel that the Aeneas and Anchises group at the centre of Shadows of the Wanderer

speaks to us topically of asylum-seekers. If so, it is only by first giving a bodily life to vision.

Light falls most fully on this central pair, in whom the act of looking is most urgent, since

it is tied to their predicament and destiny. Fur ther out, as the light dies away, the chorus

of onlookers may only witness the central event, moved but unable to assist. Fur ther out

still, we ourselves look on, still more shrouded in darkness than the witnesses, cued by

their concern.

Venturing from his land and shouldering his father, who looks out helplessly above his

head, the wanderer must concentrate, tread carefully, learn a new aler tness. All their life

is in their gaze: such is the condition Pacheco’s figures aspire to, and would evoke in us.

In Virgil’s ‘The Aeneid’, Aeneas begins the journey that will end in the founding of Rome by

carr ying his lame father Anchises out of the burning city of Troy. The young man burdened

by the old makes an image that has appealed vividly both to ar tists and to writers. There

is a version of it in a tale from the ‘1001 Nights’, in which Sinbad the Sailor is enslaved by

the Old Man of the Sea and must carr y him everywhere on his back, until by a trick he

can free himself from that relentless grip. More recently, the hero of Saul Bellow’s ‘The

Adventures of Augie March’, given his first job by crippled, domineering Mr Einhorn, finds

that carr ying his boss from place to place is one of his more exacting duties. Epic ambition

and compulsory wandering seem to belong inextricably to the motif.

When Ana Maria Pacheco used it in her 2004 study for Shadow of the Wanderer, the

common understanding was that this was a depiction of Aeneas and Anchises, and it may

have been so; but Pacheco’s work has the habit of sending out resonances well beyond

their nominal literar y or mythic star ting-point. They encourage broader interpretation and

a freer imaginative involvement. Take the separate gazes of the two figures in the study.

The younger one’s frown is aimed at a spot on the ground only a few feet in front of him,

and realistically registers the strain of bearing such a weight – more a matter of inward

reflection than of epic far-sight. It is the older figure who seems to be looking into the

distance, but with a sor t of wild hopelessness, and possibly through the blindness that

is sometimes attributed to the hero’s father. So the gazes are at odds, unresolved. And

then there is the title: an insistence not on what lies ahead, but on what is thrown back.

The different physical attitudes, rendered by the sculptor with star tling vigour, add to the

complexity and poignancy of the piece.

Now it is joined by an assembly of individually car ved but much larger figures, and the

Shadow in the title has been pluralised. It is fascinating to learn what Pacheco intended by

the word ‘study’ in this instance: a means, one comes to see, of generating or projecting a

quite different order of sculptural expression; not, however, left behind like a preparatory

sketch, but incorporated in the finished ensemble to show the nature of the drama that is

now presented in stylised tableau form. For if the ‘study’ derives from the world of epic,

these new, towering, dark-shrouded beings, elevated yet higher upon a stage of their own,

surely spring from tragic drama.

It is characteristic of Pacheco’s boldness as an ar tist, whether in her sculptural or her


Christopher Reid

pictorial work, to mix genres conventionally kept distinct. Most of her sculpture occupies

an area somewhere between theatre and galler y ar t – a frank having-it-both-ways that

seems to have scared off the more pure-minded, or priggish, among our ar t-world admin-

istrators, so that her masterpieces have not been seen either as widely or as prominently

as they deserve. Nonetheless, betwixt-and-between is where they live and have their

being, and much of their vitality is the product of deliberate clashes. In Shadows of the

Wanderer, for instance, the figures I have identified as tragedic, and which seem to me to

fulfil a role something like that of the Eumenides – or Furies – in Aeschylus’s great play, do

not wear masks, as they would have done on the classical stage, but rather display some of

the most strongly individualised physiognomies Pacheco has yet car ved. Does this diminish

their tragic power? On the contrar y, the effect is to insist that human and tragic are one

and the same. The strictures of genre must always, as the brave ar tist knows, yield to the

demands of truth.

An interpretation of these faces in their dissonant chorus is not something I shall attempt

here. Thanks to the combined robustness and delicacy of Pacheco’s car ving, which is

fur ther enhanced by the subtlety of surface treatment – a painter liness that represents

yet another ar tistic transgression – the emotional complexity of each one defies verbal

summary, and to generalise about their collective impact would be entirely futile . It is up

to the lone viewer to negotiate with these Shadows through a contemplation that will be

something like reading, something like watching a play, and even something like listening to

polyphonic music. Most impor tantly, it will involve a conjuring-up and honest recognition

of psychological demons of one’s own.

Brief Biography

Born Brazil1960-64 BA in Sculpture and Music.1965 Postgraduate Course in Music and Education.1966-73 University Lecturer 1973-75 British Council Scholarship to the Slade School of Fine Ar t, London 1985-89 Head of Fine Ar t, Norwich School of Ar t, Norfolk1997-2000 Associate Ar tist at the National Galler y, London1999 Awarded the Ordem do Rio Branco by the Brazilian Government2000 Honorar y Degree from the University of East Anglia2002 Honorar y Degree from Anglia Polytechnic University2003 Fellow, University College London

Following degrees in both ar t and music, Pacheco taught and lectured for several years at Universities in Brazil before arriving in London in 1973 on a British Council Scholarship to the Slade School of Fine Ar t. Since 1973 she has lived and worked in England. She has dedicated a number of years to education, as Head of Fine Ar t at Norwich School of Ar t and as an external assessor and visiting lecturer to a number of ar t schools in London and throughout the UK. She has also been a member of several educational boards.

Pacheco has exhibited widely in the UK and abroad including: National Galler y, London (touring); Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Ar ts; Wolverhampton Ar t Galler y; Glynn Vivian Ar t Galler y, Swansea; Whitwor th Ar t Galler y, Manchester ; Mappin Ar t Galler y, Sheffield; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Hayward Touring (Prints); Wallspace, London; Danfor th Museum of Ar t, Framingham, Massachusetts, USA; Oldham Ar t Galler y; The Gas Hall, Birmingham Museums & Ar t Galler y; Victoria Ar t Galler y, Bath; Brighton Museum & Ar t Galler y; Oslo Kunstforening, Norway; St John’s Catholic Church, Bath; Winchester Cathedral; Worcester Cathedral; Norwich Castle Museum; Pallant House, Chichester ; Trout Galler y, Dickinson College, Pennsylvania, USA; Museum of Modern Ar t, Oxford. Group exhibitions include: Heiliger Sebastian: A Splendid Readiness for Death, Kunsthalle Wien, Austria; Fråvær/Absences, touring exhibition organised by National Touring Exhibitions, Norway; Queen of Sheba: Treasures from Ancient Yemen, British Museum.

Public collections include: British Museum; British Council; Ar ts Council; Government Ar t Collection; Tate Galler y; Victoria & Alber t Museum; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Birmingham Museums & Ar t Galler y; Wolverhampton Ar t Galler y; South East Ar ts Collection; Norwich Castle Museum; Cass Sculpture Foundation, Chichester ; Whitwor th Ar t Galler y, Manchester ; Pallant House, Chichester ; Linacre College, University of Oxford; Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, Brazil; Ackland Ar t Museum, Nor th Carolina, USA; New York Public Librar y, USA; Cincinnati Ar t Museum, USA; Sweet Briar College, Virginia, USA; Por tland Ar t Museum, Oregon, USA; Fogg Ar t Museum at Harvard University, USA; Setagaya Ar t Museum, Tokyo, Japan; Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig, Germany; Trondhjems Kunstforening, Trondheim, Norway; Museum of Contemporary Ar t, Fredrikstad, Norway.

PRATT CONTEMPORARY © 2010

The Galler y, Ightham, Sevenoaks

Kent TN15 9HH, England

Telephone + 44 (0)1732 882326

e-mail pca@prattcontemporaryar t.co.uk

www.prattcontemporaryar t.co.uk

ISBN 978-0-9558266-1-0

Essays

Brendan Prendeville: ‘In the Region of Shadows’, 2010

Author and Senior Lecturer in the Depar tment of Visual Cultures

at Goldsmiths, University of London

Christopher Reid: ‘Shadows of the Wanderer’, 2008

Poet. This essay was first published by Aldeburgh Music for the

61st Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Ar ts, 2008

www.aldeburgh.co.uk

Photography

Colin Harvey

Acknowledgements

With thanks to Revd. Canon Giles Goddard, St John’s Water loo, Ghislaine Kenyon,

Dr. Ben Thomas, University of Kent, Brendan Prendeville , Christopher Reid and Colin

Harvey for their invaluable contributions.


Polychromed wood, 2008

2.5 x 5.5 x 4 m

www.pr at tcontemporar yar t .co.uk

shadows of the wanderer

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