The third public sculpture commission for ‘Sculpture at Bermondsey Square’ is ‘Loss of object and bondage to it; Fig. 2‘ by London-based artist Frances
Richardson, whose proposal was selected from applications to VITRINE’s open call. Richardson’s sculptural practice is an inquiry into the relationship between embodied cognition of architecture and human agency.
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Swathes of concrete canvas drape romantically over upright panels of greenish Perspex connected to varnished plywood volumes, defying the wind and rain to disturb them. Richardson has brought out the best in her materials, inviting them to work in synergy to stabilise the sculpture as a whole. The utter pragmatism of concrete canvas, a material developed in 2006 as a solution to the desperate need for rapid response shelters in areas of man-made or natural catastrophes, combines with the romantic appearance of its gentle folds into something of a material oxymoron, enabling the sculptor to produce an effect that, for a moment, foxes sensory understanding. The eye and the hand work together to apprehend the hard softness of the concrete canvas, its capacity to suggest movement rendered frozen in space and time. Richardson’s proposal was selected from an open call as the third commission for SCULPTURE AT Bermondsey Square. Loss of object and bondage to it; Fig. 2 was installed close to the entrance of the Shortwave Cinema, its Perspex panels echoing the green tint of the cinema’s glass skin. The work’s tilted planes and cascading drapery provided a counterpoint to the compulsive right angles of the surrounding built environment. The work’s boxlike structures overlaid with cloth conjured up a range of associations with the use of drapery and clothing in sculptures from antiquity through to the Renaissance, while its more curtain-like elements alluded to theatrical and domestic environments, or to the many different kinds of veiling. The refinement of the work’s fabric flourishes was challenged by the startling solidity and roughness of Richardson’s concrete canvas.
For visitors to Bermondsey Square, these three sculptures, alluding to the cultural tropes of divine and aesthetic trinities, offered a formal link with the weathered stone sarcophagi in St Mary Magdalen Churchyard, across Abbey Street from the Square. The three elements became one in the course of its presentation and, like the historic stone memorials in the Churchyard, Richardson’s sculpture gathered detritus, the windfall of local trees and passers-by. In developing the work for its public setting, Richardson was concerned with achieving a sense of intimacy between viewers and the work, involving a harmony between the scale of the human body and the work, and the irresistible invitation to approach the work and touch it. For Richardson, ‘my process of making is to hold the material and feel the weight and the balance, and for it to talk to me whilst I am making.’ As a result of this ‘conversation among equals’ the artist has harnessed the multifaceted nature of each material: the Perspex lets light through but obscures the view; the plywood is flat but not square; and the concrete canvas publicly performs its baffling visual and tactile paradoxes.
Text: Ellen Mara De Wachter
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‘Loss of object and bondage to it; Fig. 2’ received special support from Concrete Canvas Ltd, Perspex Distribution Ltd and Inplas Fabrications Ltd.
Generously funded by Arts Council England, The National Lottery, Ideas Tap, and Bermondsey Square Community Fund. With additional support from Team London Bridge, Pangaea Sculptors’ Centre, Shortwave Cinema, We Are Goat and Southwark Council.
Media partner: Art Review, Elephant Magazine.
