Psalms

1997, Donald Rodney

Psalms 1997 consists of an empty motorised wheelchair to which the artist added a neural computer, sensors and a camera. It is programmed to navigate independently through the gallery space, following a carefully scored path in a figure of eight configuration. Whenever the wheelchair encounters an object or person in its path, it stops moving. The number eight references harmony, peace and balance, but also represents infinity. Psalms bears testament to Rodney’s thinking around his own physical frailty and eventual absence as he was dealing with sickle cell anemia and preparing for hip replacement surgery which would drastically impact his mobility. Psalms uses eight sonar sensors, shaft-encoders, a video camera and a rate gyroscope to determine its position in the gallery. For this complex construction, Rodney collaborated with robotic technology specialists Guido Bugmann and Mike Philips. The team received funding from the Henry Moore Foundation for the development of the work. This collaborative way of working was typical during the late stages of Rodney’s career.

The Earth is an Angel

1987, Shirazeh Houshiary

Houshiary was born in Iran but works in Britain. This is one of a series of sculptures of various sizes in which the wings of an angel symbolize force and energy. The image of a four-winged angel is derived from those found in Byzantine churches in Istanbul where two wings are directed towards earth and two point upwards to the sky. Power, according to the artist, lies at the meeting point.

Gallery label, August 2004

Epidauros II

1961, Dame Barbara Hepworth

Reclining Figure

1939, cast 1959, Henry Moore OM, CH

In the late 1930s Moore made six small Reclining Figures in lead. This is one of eight bronze casts after one of those lead originals. These sculptures relate to drawings which show that their shapes were suggested by bone or even rock formations. The relationship between body and land was of particular interest to Moore at this time since he had just completed a large 'Recumbent Figure' in green Hornton stone for the architect Serge Chermayeff's garden at Halland in Sussex. Stone could be carved to suggest cavities created by weathering; however, the medium of lead produced a different emphasis. The lead figures remind the viewer of the angular, skeletal framework underlying the human body.

Gallery label, September 2004

Early One Morning

1962, Sir Anthony Caro

Early One Morning is a major example of the kind of sculpture that established Caro as the leading young sculptor of the 1960s. In this work, his arrangement of planes and lines along a horizontal axis gave greater freedom in creating different rhythms and configurations. The work has no fixed visual identity and no single focus of interest. Rather, it unfolds and expands into the spectator’s space, its appearance changing with the viewpoint. The individual elements are unified by the bright red colour and Caro sees the way they cohere, making a sculptural whole, as being like the relationship of notes within a piece of music.

Gallery label, September 2016

Sphinx

1959, Kim Lim

The title of this work speaks of Kim Lim’s love of ancient artefacts. It evokes a mythical hybrid creature, with the head of a human and the body of a lion. While still a student, Lim began to salvage, carve and assemble off-cuts she found in wood yards. This allowed her to create art from building blocks which already had forms and histories. She then combined them into bold and playful configurations. Here, Lim scorched the surface of the wood so different sections would have distinctive textures and reflect the light differently

Gallery label, September 2023

Rang Baranga

1969, Rasheed Araeen

Rang Baranga is made from an intersecting lattice structure composed of eight individual columns, each painted in a sequence of contrasting colours. The title is an Urdu term meaning ‘of many colours’. Trained as a civil engineer in Karachi, Pakistan, Rasheed Araeen creates sculptures that reference architectural and engineering structures as well as modernist art. In his search for stable yet open configurations, he found inspiration in nature, particularly in the movement of fire and water. Araeen was also struck by the sculptural language of Anthony Caro (displayed in this room), whose work he encountered after moving to London in 1964.

Gallery label, August 2024

Relics in the Pillow of Dreams

1985, Veronica Ryan OBE

The pillow of Ryan’s Relics in the Pillow of Dreams supports a set of bronze, pod-like 'relics’. They sit in its indentations, seemingly about to sprout from them. Both pillows and pods, as well as nuts, fruits and seeds, reappear throughout Ryan’s sculptures. These at times reference fruit from the Caribbean island of Montserrat, where Ryan spent her childhood before moving to the UK. Here, the soft-seeming pillow is placed close to the earth, acting as a link through which time-past (through the bronze ‘relics’) and time-future (through the possibility of dreams) meet.

Gallery label, March 2022

Current Disturbance

1996, Mona Hatoum

Referencing both the human body and rigid systems of abstraction, the installation Current Disturbance 1996 is made from an immense grid of over 200 cages, light bulbs and the amplified sound of electric currents. As the bulbs light up and fade out at irregular intervals, they sporadically illuminate the surrounding gallery. Inside each of the cages rests a single lightbulb, all interconnected via a central convergence. Another single bulb is suspended inside the structure, illuminating the junction box at the centre. The grid of metal cages sets up a contrast between the sense of systematization and the chaos of randomised flashing lights and the mess of wiring covering the floor. The tension arising from this juxtaposition of elements serves to intensify the feeling of suspended energy and instability, inspiring a certain discomfort in the viewer.

Untitled

1998, Doris Salcedo

In the 1990s, Salcedo made a series of sculptures by filling items of furniture with concrete. The resulting works suggest the violation of domestic space and the human body. Rather than an empty space waiting to be filled with worldly belongings or childish fantasies, the wardrobe becomes hermetically sealed and inaccessible. The configuration of armoire and chair is akin to that of a Pietà, the traditional depiction of the Madonna holding the body of the dead Christ on her lap.

Gallery label, July 2007

Familiars

1992, Hamad Butt

Familiars 1992 is an installation comprising three separate parts that are displayed together. These elements are individually titled Substance Sublimation Unit, Hypostasis and Cradle. The collective title for the work refers to the name given to the mythical shape-shifting spectres said to accompany witches. It is also the title of an artist’s book, which was Butt’s last project, published posthumously in 1996 by Iniva and the John Hansard Gallery, Southampton. The work was made in collaboration with scientists and technicians at Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, part of the University of London. One of the collaborators was Stephen Ramsay, a chemistry research technician and specialist in scientific glassblowing, who fabricated the glass components. They were made at the Chemical Engineering Department of Imperial College, with assistance from both the department of Physical Chemistry and the Toxic Laboratory concerning the use of the halogens included in the work: iodine, bromine and chlorine. Butt himself trained as a biochemist before going to study art at Goldsmiths College, London, where his contemporaries included Gary Hume (born 1962) and Damien Hirst (born 1965).

Poem of Nine Verses

1966–8, Saloua Raouda Choucair

In the early 1960s, Choucair began creating what she called ‘sculptural poems’ using interlocking forms that can be rearranged in various formations. Poem of Nine Verses is influenced by Sufi poetry, Islamic and modernist architecture, and geometric abstraction. Each aluminium piece can stand alone, like a verse in a poem, but also forms a unified structure. In creating this work, the artist ‘wanted rhythm like the poetic meter, to be at once more independent and interlinked, and to have lines like meanings.’

Gallery label, March 2025

Untitled

1976, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

This work presents a series of volumetric renderings of cubes, placed serially against each other to form an intricate geometric pattern that also reveals interlocking rhomboid and diamond shapes. The reflections formed within its fragmented mirrors can change dramatically, depending on the surroundings and lighting. Farmanfarmaian’s work relates to the geometric forms of American minimalist sculpture as well as the patterns found in Iran’s architectural monuments. Her use of geometric shapes is underpinned by her studies of Sufi cosmology, in which each shape has an intrinsic symbolic meaning.

Gallery label, April 2013

Untitled (Cravings White)

1988, reconstructed 2011, Lee Bul

This is the reconstruction of a sculptural body-costume worn by the artist during her ‘Cravings’ performance at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul in 1989. Hidden microphones amplified the sound of her movements. Lee recalled that her ‘performances were a natural extension of my sculptural concerns’. She has continued to make sculptures, whose monstrous forms deconstruct ideals of the female body. In reconstructing Untitled (Cravings White) long after the original was lost in a studio flood, she reinforced the links between her sculptures and performances.

Gallery label, July 2015

Thirty Pieces of Silver

1988–9, Cornelia Parker CBE RA

Thirty Pieces of Silver comprises over a thousand flattened silver objects, including plates, spoons, candlesticks, trophies, cigarette cases, teapots and trombones. All the objects were ceremoniously crushed by a steamroller at Cornelia Parker’s request. She then arranged the transformed silver artefacts into thirty disc-shaped groups, which are suspended about a foot from the floor by hundreds of fine wires. Each ‘disc’ is approximately ninety centimetres in diameter and they are always hung in orderly rows, although their overall configuration is adapted each time to the space in which the work is displayed. The title refers to the biblical story of how the apostle Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus in return for thirty pieces of silver. When the work was exhibited in the Hayward Gallery’s British Art Show of 1990, Parker commented on the work in the exhibition catalogue:

Cocon du Vide

2000, Chen Zhen

Chen Zhen lived and worked mainly between Shanghai, New York and Paris, and his work reflects this constant shifting between cultures, which the artist called ‘transexperience’. In his sculptures and installations he typically assembled obsolete everyday objects, particularly old furniture and candles, sometimes in combination with fragments of technology and consumer goods. This work belongs to a series of sculptures made between 1999 and 2000, sharing the title Cocon du Vide (‘empty cocoon’) and featuring chrysalis-like forms made from Chinese abacus and Buddhist rosary beads threaded onto metal frames.

Gallery label, June 2013

Untitled (Stairs)

2001, Rachel Whiteread

Untitled (Stairs) is a very large free-standing sculpture made up of ten cast elements bolted together to form a unit. As its title indicates, it is the cast of a staircase, including three square-shaped landings as the stairs zigzag down the stairwell. The artist cast the surface of the stairs and the space above them. She made a 1:10 scale model before the casting in order to envisage the form of the solidified space and to work out how the final sculpture should be positioned. It has been rotated by 90 degrees so that it stands on an edge which would have been a wall in the original space. Whiteread cast the sections making up Untitled (Stairs) using a durable polymer reinforced plaster, known as Jesmonite, combined with layers of fibreglass matting, painted directly onto the surfaces of the stairs, the walls and the enclosing panels which had been fitted against the stair railings to make moulds. The casts are approximately 80mm thick. Although the assembled sculpture has the appearance of a solid block, it is in fact a shell.

Babel

2001, Cildo Meireles

Babel 2001 is a large-scale sculptural installation that takes the form of a circular tower made from hundreds of second-hand analogue radios that the artist has stacked in layers. The radios are tuned to a multitude of different stations and are adjusted to the minimum volume at which they are audible. Nevertheless, they compete with each other and create a cacophony of low, continuous sound, resulting in inaccessible information, voices or music.

Ink Splash II

2012, El Anatsui

Ink Splash II resembles an abstract painting. However the illusion of swift, gestural brushstrokes and splashes has been created through a painstaking process of weaving flattened bottle tops together with copper wire. The artist explains, ‘the most important thing is the transformation. The fact that these media, each identifying a brand of drink, are no longer going back to serve the same role but are elements that could generate some reflection, some thinking, or just some wonder…[T]hey are removed from their accustomed, functional context into a new one, and they bring along their histories and identities.’

Gallery label, January 2016

untitled: upturnedhouse2, 2012

2012, Dame Phyllida Barlow DBE RA

untitled: upturnedhouse2, 2012 2012 is a large-scale sculpture by Phyllida Barlow. The structure is made of wood, steel, polyurethane foam and cement with a surface comprising multiple panels. This enclosure-like shape appears to balance jauntily on a stack of wooden wedges made to resemble concrete, while blocks and planes also jut from the sides of the work. The panels are painted in different colours in a bold palette of intense reds and yellows combined with softer hues of pink and grey, with the inclusion of black at intervals so as to break up any sense of colour synchrony. With one corner raised in the air, the work looks as if it could possibly collapse or tip over, hardly finding its balance on the wedges that purportedly keep it in place. The title of the work – as is typical in Barlow’s practice – is an ‘all-in-one’ compound word that points to a functional structure (a house) that has been abstracted from its initial form and purpose to become an object of display now devoid of any function.

Quipu Womb (The Story of the Red Thread, Athens)

2017, Cecilia Vicuña

Vicuña calls Quipu Womb a ‘poem in space.’ Over 50 large strands of unspun wool, dyed red, flow down from a metal ring high above our heads. Each cord has different knots spaced rhythmically along its length. The work references menstrual blood as well as the energies, flows and cycles of nature. Vicuña draws from Indigenous weaving practices, ritual, and environmental activism. Many of these works include explorations of the quipu. This is an ancient system of knotting rope used by Inca and Andean cultures, thought to be an alternative to written language. The artist says this ‘must have been a female invention.’

Gallery label, February 2022

Armada

2017–2019, Hew Locke

Armada 2019 is an installation made up of forty-five boats of varying sizes made by the artist between 2017 and 2019. The flotilla, which is suspended from the ceiling around shoulder height, includes boats from different periods and places – miniature cargo ships and fishing boats sit alongside caravels and galleons. Locke has described them as votive boats, based on models he had seen in churches and cathedrals in continental Europe, offered by worshippers to give thanks for survival at sea (in Buck 2019, accessed 29 November 2019). Each boat is made from and decorated with a variety of materials. Some of them feature plastic toys, nets and decorations which are mass produced and widely available very cheaply; others incorporate jewels, charms, military badges and replica medals from conflicts involving former colonies. Some are adorned with brass cut-outs featuring Portuguese mercenaries as depicted by sixteenth-century Benin sculptors, along with images of contemporary soldiers. Coins from places like the Caribbean, Gambia and Syria call to mind international trade and the movement of goods, as well as the movement of people and the current global refugee crisis.

The Collection of Jane Ryan & William Saunders

2019, Pio Abad, Frances Wadsworth Jones

The Collection of Jane Ryan & William Saunders 2019 is a sculptural installation presented as a long vitrine showcasing fifteen objects rendered in white 3D-printed plastic. Each object takes the form of an item of ornate fine jewellery, such as a necklace a tiara or a brooch, and is presented on a brass stand according to the display convention of decorative arts museums. Beneath each object is a brief printed description of the item and, in a subversion of traditional museum practices, the equivalent value of the jewellery in public goods and services. For example, in the first two descriptions, ‘A Belle Epoque diamond and platinum tiara, by Cartier’ is equated to ‘The treatment of 12,052 cases of tuberculosis until their full recovery’ and ‘An antique Ceylon sapphire and diamond necklace, by Van Cleef & Arpels’ is equated to ' Electricity to approximately 2,252 households in off-grid area’.