Barry Flanagan
28 Jul - 31 Aug 2007
© Barry Flanagan
Handstand in Aid of Millennial Blessings, 1999
Bronze
80 x 36.2 x 36.2 cm (31.5 x 14.3 x 14.3 in)
Handstand in Aid of Millennial Blessings, 1999
Bronze
80 x 36.2 x 36.2 cm (31.5 x 14.3 x 14.3 in)
BARRY FLANAGAN
"Sculptures"
July 28 - August 31, 2007
We have pleasure in announcing a solo exhibition by Barry Flanagan (b 1941 in Prestatyn, North Wales, now resident in Dublin).
"Thematically the choice of the hare is really quite a rich and expressive sort of model. [...] And on a practical level, if you consider what conveys situation and meaning and feeling in a human figure, the range of expression is in fact far more limited than the device of investing an animal - a hare especially - with the attributes of a human being" (Barry Flanagan).
Before Barry Flanagan devoted his attention to his trade-mark, the hare, he had already gained a reputation as a sculptor, with room installations, using a wide variety of materials as in arte povera. His hares first appeared in drawings in the late 1970s. From the start, they were extremely thin and comically, almost poetically gangling. Sometimes Flanagan's hare sculptures seem like drawings erect in the air, becoming fleeting, mobile events before our eyes. "If sculpture and drawing can in fact have a bearing on each other, Barry Flanagan stylises the bodies of his bronze-cast hares into a materialised line, a drawing in space, encompassing and activating its emptiness" (Hans-Jürgen Schwalm).
Behind what at first glance seems like touching naïvety lies a complex archetypal formula, an elemental pattern inherent in all of us, one of the first, minimal attempts to draw a figure. Think of the cave drawings of Altamira and Lascaux, or children's attempts to express themselves in drawing.
Barry Flanagan studied in 1957/58 at the Birmingham College of Arts and Crafts and from 1964 at St. Martin's School of Art in London, graduating in 1966. He taught here and at the famous Central School for Arts and Crafts from 1967 to 1971. In 1982 he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale. A major retrospective of his work was shown at the Fundación La Caixa in Madrid in 1993, subsequently touring to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nantes (1994). His many sculpture projects in public spaces include the presentation of monumental sculptures in Park Avenue, New York (1995/96) and Grant Park, Chicago (1996). In 2000 Tate Liverpool held a major solo exhibition, which was followed by a comprehensive show in the Kunsthalle Recklinghausen (2002).
"Sculptures"
July 28 - August 31, 2007
We have pleasure in announcing a solo exhibition by Barry Flanagan (b 1941 in Prestatyn, North Wales, now resident in Dublin).
"Thematically the choice of the hare is really quite a rich and expressive sort of model. [...] And on a practical level, if you consider what conveys situation and meaning and feeling in a human figure, the range of expression is in fact far more limited than the device of investing an animal - a hare especially - with the attributes of a human being" (Barry Flanagan).
Before Barry Flanagan devoted his attention to his trade-mark, the hare, he had already gained a reputation as a sculptor, with room installations, using a wide variety of materials as in arte povera. His hares first appeared in drawings in the late 1970s. From the start, they were extremely thin and comically, almost poetically gangling. Sometimes Flanagan's hare sculptures seem like drawings erect in the air, becoming fleeting, mobile events before our eyes. "If sculpture and drawing can in fact have a bearing on each other, Barry Flanagan stylises the bodies of his bronze-cast hares into a materialised line, a drawing in space, encompassing and activating its emptiness" (Hans-Jürgen Schwalm).
Behind what at first glance seems like touching naïvety lies a complex archetypal formula, an elemental pattern inherent in all of us, one of the first, minimal attempts to draw a figure. Think of the cave drawings of Altamira and Lascaux, or children's attempts to express themselves in drawing.
Barry Flanagan studied in 1957/58 at the Birmingham College of Arts and Crafts and from 1964 at St. Martin's School of Art in London, graduating in 1966. He taught here and at the famous Central School for Arts and Crafts from 1967 to 1971. In 1982 he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale. A major retrospective of his work was shown at the Fundación La Caixa in Madrid in 1993, subsequently touring to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nantes (1994). His many sculpture projects in public spaces include the presentation of monumental sculptures in Park Avenue, New York (1995/96) and Grant Park, Chicago (1996). In 2000 Tate Liverpool held a major solo exhibition, which was followed by a comprehensive show in the Kunsthalle Recklinghausen (2002).