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Our forthcoming programme for 2018 / 19

09 Oct 2017

We are delighted to announce The Hepworth Wakefield's forthcoming programme for 2018/19.

Our ambitious programme for next year opens with the first major UK exhibition in over a decade of the immersive and interactive digital sculptures created by Anthony McCall. Summer will be a celebration of Surrealism with a double bill of Lee Miller and Viviane Sassen. Autumn will see the return of The Hepworth Prize for Sculpture.

Image: Anthony McCall. "Solid Light Films and Other Works" (1971-2014). Installation view Eye Film Museum, Amsterdam 2014. Photo by Hans Wilschut.

Major exhibitions

Lee Miller & Surrealism in Britain

22 June – 7 October 2018

Lee Miller (1907 – 1977) first entered the world of photography in New York as a model in Vogue in the 1920s. In 1929 she moved to Paris and worked with Man Ray, establishing her own studio and becoming part of the Surrealist milieu. A rich strand of Surrealist practice emerged in Britain in the 1930s and developed in the immediate pre-war period, during which Miller moved to London.

This exhibition will explore the creative networks between artists in the UK in the 1930s and 40s through Miller’s lens. Miller’s photographs of and collaborations with Surrealists working in the UK, including Eileen Agar, Leonora Carrington, Max Ernst and René Magritte will be presented alongside their own paintings and sculptures.

It will also focus on Miller’s own practice and how she turned her Surrealist eye across disciplines to the worlds of fashion and journalism, revealing and revelling in the strange and extraordinary.

Image: Lee Miller, Henry Moore with his sculpture Mother and Child, Farleys Garden, East Sussex, 1953. Modern C-type Print. © Lee Miller Archives, England 2017. All rights reserved

Viviane Sassen: Hot Mirror

22 June – 7 October 2018

Echoing the career of Lee Miller, internationally renowned artist Viviane Sassen (b. 1972) straddles the fashion and fine art worlds. Central to this exhibition is the inspiration of Surrealism, a movement Sassen recognises as one of her earliest artistic influences, seen in the uncanny shadows, fragmented bodies and dreamlike landscapes of her work.

Hot Mirror will bring together photographs from several collections made over the last ten years, including the celebrated Flamboya and Parasomnia series (2013), shown alongside new photographs and collages, to create image-poems that draw on the Surrealist strategies of collage to offer new and unexpected juxtapositions.

As well as an overview of Sassen’s artistic practice, the exhibition will present a new version of her immersive film installation, Totem

Image: Viviane Sassen, Yellow Vlei, 2014. Courtesy of the artist.

The Hepworth Prize for Sculpture

26 October 2018 - 20 January 2019

Named to honour the legacy of Wakefield-born artist, Barbara Hepworth, The Hepworth Prize for Sculpture is the UK’s most significant prize to recognise the medium of sculpture.

Open to British or UK based artists of any age and at any stage in their career, the £30,000 biennial award celebrates artists who have made a significant contribution to sculpture in its broadest definition.

An exhibition of work by the five artists shortlisted for the prize will be presented.

Collection displays

Image: Serena Korda, Hold Fast, Stand Sure, I Scream a Revolution, 2016. Originally commissioned by Glasgow School of Art, Comar and Glasgow International 2016. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Alan Dimmick

Celebrating 300 Years of Thomas Chippendale

13 July 2018 - 25 February 2019

2018 marks 300 years since the birth of Yorkshire-born Thomas Chippendale, one of Britain’s most eminent interior designers and cabinet makers.

To celebrate this significant anniversary, the gallery is working with one of the finest treasure houses in the North of England, Nostell Priory, a National Trust house with over 100 pieces of Chippendale furniture. The role of artists in influencing interiors will be explored through key loans from both collections and special commissions by contemporary artists.

Visitors will see modern and contemporary artworks in Nostell’s historic rooms and the most fashionable furniture of the 18th century within the 21st-century gallery spaces of The Hepworth Wakefield.