The Arts Council Collection is presenting a new exhibition of sculpture by Garth Evans, selected by his friend and former student Richard Deacon, which will open at Longside Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park on 23 March 2013.
This is the first major Garth Evans exhibition in the UK in over 20 years and will feature 28 works spanning the period 1959 – 1982, many drawn from the Arts Council Collection. The show will reconsider Evans’ contribution to sculpture in this formative period, moving from early reliefs, to large colourful fibreglass sculptures through to entirely floor-based works. It will include a re-creation of Evans’ seminal work Breakdown (1971) which was stolen shortly after its first public viewing. Evans has recreated the work based on surviving drawings, photographs and original plans and it will be installed immediately outside the Longside Gallery.
Born in Manchester in 1934, Evans studied at the Slade School of Art (1957-60), exhibiting regularly in London from 1962 until 1991. One of Britain’s most innovative sculptors – a generation younger than Anthony Caro and coming before the New British Sculptors of the 1980s, which included Richard Deacon as well as Tony Cragg and Richard Wentworth. Evans is known for his use of geometric, asymmetrical forms and a commitment to using everyday materials such as plywood, fibreglass and polythene. Evans influenced a generation of British sculptors not just through his innovative approach to sculpture but also as a teacher at Central St Martin’s School of Art.
Turner Prize winner Richard Deacon’s selection of Evans’ work results from extensive conversations between the two sculptors and focuses on work created in the first two decades of Evans’ long and varied career. The show will bring together the Arts Council Collection’s significant holdings of Evans’ work, alongside key loans from major UK collections including the British Museum, Leeds Museums and Galleries and Tate as well as a selection of key pieces from the artist’s studio. It will feature many sculptures that have not been seen in public since they were first exhibited in the 1960s and ’70s.
Garth Evans Exhibition Curated By Richard Deacon At Yorkshire Sculpture Park
