Betwixt and between: Jonathan Cate travels to Salisbury and Gloucester for two major exhibitions of sculpture.
Koestle-Cate, Jonathan
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In an artistic climate deeply aware of the inescapable agency of
context it is no surprise to find that sculpture has become the
privileged medium for contemporary visual art in cathedrals. Capable as
it is of interacting in a direct and physical way with its material
surroundings, at its best sculpture is able to compete with the kind of
complex visual environment presented by a cathedral in ways that
painting or photography often fails to do. Thus it is that the
cathedrals of Salisbury and Gloucester are the latest hosts to two
exhibitions of contemporary sculpture. In each case, highly evocative
themes have been chosen to frame the works on display: in the one, the
notion of threshold (limen) with its concomitant qualities of
transition, ambiguity, openness and indeterminacy; in the other, the
fecund image of a melting pot, its admixture of disparate elements
engendering something other.
Liminality has long been a favoured trope of art discourses. The
place of the threshold, the in-between, or the margin, is seen as a rich
seam to mine for the indeterminate, undecided or unformed, or a means by
which to explore those threshold spaces between materiality and the
immaterial so beloved of artists like Anish Kapoor. But, above all,
liminality is associated with the rites-of-passage anthropology of
Arnold van Gennep to which, in many important respects, liturgical
theory is indebted. Liminality marks the tenuous threshold between
before and after in the ritual process, and is frequently (though not
consistently) equated with the sacred. It is a period of exclusion,
outside normal social structures, in which habitual categories and
classifications are dissolved. (1) For Victor Turner, a later
anthropologist much influenced by van Gennep's ideas, liminality
placed the subject 'betwixt and between' his or her former
condition and an as-yet undetermined state. Art in cathedrals is
peculiarly receptive to this notion of liminality. As the catalogue
says, 'We chose the theme of 'Liminality' with that idea
in mind of Cathedrals and sacred space as an in-between place, a place
of possibility and encounter with that which is greater than
ourselves.' Equally, contemporary art within ecclesiastical
contexts often falls outside usual categorisations, caught somewhere
between sacred and secular worlds, as though straddling both while
belonging fully to neither. In recognising this indeterminate triad of
viewer, context and artwork, then, liminality offers an apt analogy.
At Salisbury it is through tangible sculptural form that
intimations of the liminal are descried. In Benjamin Storch's
sculpture, for example, from which the exhibition derives its name, the
torsion of its steel form creates a kind of moebius strip, outer
becoming inner surface. Solid as a ship's propeller, its anamorphic
form seems eminently pliable, in the process of twisting and reforming
itself. Keith Rand's plant-like forms similarly fold and unfold,
peeling back outer skins to unwrap tantalising glimpses of what lies
beneath or within. In other pieces hidden or enclosed spaces are
sometimes revealed, sometimes not, or, having briefly opened, appear to
be on the cusp of closing tightly shut, as in Roger Stephens' Cardo
(meaning 'hinge'), whose marble gatekeeper greets you on
entry. Another kind of threshold is suggested by James Jones'
Beyond the Sphere of Reason, which, like some suspended baldacchino,
compresses the temporal space between ancient and modern, its silver
canopy fabricated from the digital language of zeroes and ones or, as
Jones proposes, from Leibniz's differentiation between the
'one' of God and 'zero' of the void. Throughout, a
sense of transition underlines the ambulatory concept of the exhibition,
expressed in its byline, 'Toward the Unknown Region': whether
through movement, both actual and figurative, as in Rebecca
Newnham's kinetic evocation of bird flight, or allusions to
transformative change, dramatically realised by Jonathan Loxley's
embryonic Origin, or the hermetic chrysalis of Jay Battle's Pendant
Line. All invoke some kind of passage toward the unknown, toward
something beyond the realms of intellect or knowledge.
'Liminality' takes advantage of the cathedral as a
dramatic space in which to display sculptural works, and uses that space
to good effect, although unfortunately curtailed at times by a
persistent problem for art in cathedrals --the imposition of rows of
chairs into the vicinity of the work. Loxley's Origin and
Storch's Liminality particularly suffered from this encroachment,
inhibiting a spatial engagement with the works that each demanded. Least
successful, and maintaining a rather tenuous relationship with the
overall exhibition, was Sean Henry's outdoors sculpture,
Catafalque. In an exhibition where form played so central a role, in my
view his was at one and the same time the most clearly-defined and the
least effective. (2)
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'Crucible' adopts a similarly ambulatory format but on a
much larger scale, with 76 works scattered throughout the cathedral and
grounds, presided over by Eduardo Paolozzi's towering Vulcan. With
this mythical blacksmith, in whose crucible even the most refractory of
materials must surely bend to the demands of the creative process, the
scene is set for the drama of the art experience to come. Indeed, its
claim to be 'the sculptural exhibition of the decade' is no
idle boast. Nonetheless, with an exhibition of this size the results are
likely to be varied. At its least successful it treats the cathedral as
a vast exhibition space for a kind of sculptural miscellany, which does
little to enhance the artworks' relation to the primary functions
and architecture of the cathedral. Such works are, however, in the
minority; one's overwhelming impression is of a sensitive
discernment directing the curating process, effectively balancing
particular works against particular places, thereby forming more
integral, dialogic relations with the cathedral. To that end good use
has been made of Gloucester's many curious niches, chapels and
corners. Antony Gormley's prostrate figure, Close V, for example,
was well placed within a sunken, cold and gloomy antechamber. A
startling contrast was achieved with the setting for Ralph Brown's
naked, abject and pitiful Clochard, cowering on the floor within a few
yards of a magnificently-robed marble effigy for a well-heeled
Bishop's tomb. Gloucester's current artist-in-residence, David
Behar-Perahia, took advantage of a remnant of the cathedral's
former life as an abbey: the monk's lavatorium. His contribution to
Crucible was uniquely sculpted of sound and light, a projection of
rippling flagstones and ambient noise, reinvoking that earlier history.
A welcome surprise was to find Leonard McComb's golden
sculpture, Portrait of a Young Man Standing, well situated in a
dimly-lit corner of Gloucester's magnificent cloisters, a work
whose unabashed nakedness had once clothed it in controversy, forcing
its removal from a previous cathedral exhibition at Lincoln some two
decades ago. With that history in mind it was interesting to note the
constancy of nakedness as a theme throughout this exhibition, frequently
aligned with tortured or abject figures, most prominently Damien
Hirst's thoroughly denuded St Bartholomew and David Mach's
agonised Christ, fabricated entirely from coat-hangers, facing each
other across the length of the nave. With such works, and others, the
allegory of a crucible's refining fires appositely reflected their
trial by ordeal, so central to the Christian tradition. Nicholas Bury,
the newly retired Dean of Gloucester confided to me his surprise that
there had been so little controversy or complaint. Clearly something has
changed in our attitude to the naked form. More troubling for some,
despite the ubiquity of the cathedral's own resident memento mori,
was the morbid presence of death, from praying skeletons to skeletal
chairs to graphic reminders of warfare. Yet complementing such sombre
themes was a lighter sense of play, often through representations of
organic life. Nick Bibby's giant tortoise, for example, was a
favourite with many visitors.
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If I were to single out one work for particular commendation it
would be Don Brown's Yoko XIX, an intriguingly shrouded figure,
well-situated in the Lady Chapel. Though distinctly recognisable as a
human figure, it was only through the subtlest of clues: the dome of the
head and sharper outlines of the shoulders showing beneath the black,
bronze drapes. The stillness of this piece had a quiet but troubling
presence which I found both disconcerting and strangely appealing.
Throughout the day I returned repeatedly to the Lady Chapel to gaze at
this recondite portrait of the artist's wife.
Both exhibitions are accompanied by full-colour illustrated texts,
'Crucible' in particular supplemented by a handsome catalogue.
(1.) Rites of passage are significant in emphasising the
transitional nature of experience. Van Gennep identifies three distinct
phases in this process: rites of separation (preliminal rites), rites of
transition (liminal or threshold rites), and rites of incorporation
(postliminal rites). The first, or preliminal, stage is one of
separation, involving symbolic action (or actual physical removal)
signifying the detachment of an individual or group from their normal
social or cultural state. The second, or liminal, phase he termed a
marginal or threshold state, during which time the initiate enters a
state of exception and ambiguity. During this stage their social or
cultural realm bears little resemblance to their past life, nor any
future state. As such it is a dangerously unrecognisable ... The final
step, or postliminal stage, van Gennep calls aggregation, whereby the
initiate is reincorporated back into their familiar social world,
regaining a certain stability and accord with cultural norms (Arnold von
Gennep, 1960, The Rites of Passage, London and Henley: Routledge and
Kegan Paul).
(2.) It may be an unfair comparison to make, but I was reminded of
the astonishingly lifelike figures of an artist like Ron Mueck, whose
uncanny realism is given an added frisson through their disproportionate
scale. Henry's giant, supine dreamer seemed all too palpably
fabricated (despite Henry's assertion in the catalogue that he is
'obviously alive'), lacking that uncanny liminality, that
shift between real and unreal, the everyday and the extraordinary, that
we associate with Mueck.
Jonathan Koestle-Cate teaches and studies at Goldsmiths College,
London
