The Hepworth Wakefield announces 2024/25 exhibition programme
15 Sep 2023
The Hepworth Wakefield is excited to share its exhibition programme for 2024/25, showcasing the very best in contemporary art and rigorously researched explorations of 20th-century art. Exhibition entry is free for Members, Wakefield District residents and under 18s.
21 June – 3 November 2024
Ronald Moody: Sculpting Life
Jamaican-born sculptor Ronald Moody is one of the most significant artists of the 20th century and yet, there have not been any comprehensive exhibitions or monographs of his work until now.
This major exhibition, guest curated by Moody specialist Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski working together with Eleanor Clayton, The Hepworth Wakefield’s Senior Curator, will explore the development of Moody’s art as well as his contribution and impact on British and international art history.
The exhibition will bring together 40 Moody works from large-scale figurative sculptures made in wood in the 1930s through to post-war experimentation with concrete and resin casting. These works will be set within the context of his contemporaries Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, artists he exhibited alongside such as Eileen Agar and his friend Jacob Epstein, as well as the group known as the Caribbean Artists Movement of which Moody was a founding member. Ronald Moody: His Universe will also include his broader creative endeavours such as poetry, writings and audio broadcasts which he turned to at the advent of the Second World War to discuss his artistic influences. This archive section will be presented in a specially commissioned installation by Sheffield-based artist Kedisha Coakley.
Igshaan Adams
A new exhibition by South African artist Igshaan Adams, featuring his cross-disciplinary work that encompasses weaving, sculpture and installation. Born in Bonteheuwel, a former segregated townshipin Cape Town, Adams draws upon his experience to explore race, religion and sexuality in his intensely crafted work. He literally weaves together influences from his childhood memories,networks of familial relationships and politically charged spaces shaped by violence and generational trauma, using, among other materials, beads, seashells, gemstones and glass to intricately map his past.
His beautiful and densely worked textiles and tapestries bring together cultural and religious references with objects that have been present throughout his life. Adams says: ‘I’m interested in the personal stories recorded on the surface. What is recorded is not necessarily always a factualaccount but can be what is imagined – a combination of myth-making and meaning-making.’
21 November 2024 - 27 April 2025
Forbidden Territories will mark 100 years of ‘Surrealism’, since its origins in 1924 with the publication of the ‘Surrealist Manifesto’ by the poet and critic André Breton. Surrealism has become one of the most influential artistic, intellectual and literary movements of the 20th Century, and continues to inspire artists working today.
This exhibition will take you on a journey through the fantastical terrains of Surrealism over 100 years, looking at how Surreal ideas can turn landscape into a metaphor for the unconscious, fuse the bodily with the botanical, and provide means to express political anxieties, gender constraints and freedoms. Trans-historical, thematic groupings of artwork will bring together artists of Breton’s circle from the 1920s, Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, Eileen Agar, Lee Miller and Max Ernst, among others, alongside later Surrealists such as Leonora Carrington, Edith Rimmington, Marion Adnams, Conroy Maddox, Desmond Morris and more, and contemporary artists working within the legacy of Surrealism such as Michael Dean, Helen Marten and Portia Zvavahera.
Louise Giovanelli
Louise Giovanelli is a Manchester-based artist, who is known for her large-scale meditative paintings that capture ephemeral and sensual moments using beautifully crafted textures and vivid beguiling colour.
Her work explores the tension between representation and materiality, figurationand abstraction, and how the mechanics of picture making shape our slow act of looking. Her subject matter is primarily chosen for its formal qualities and includes, staged photographs, film stills, classical sculpture, and architectural elements. Regular motifs in her works are fabrics and locks of hair that are notoriously hard to capture in oil paint. The results are captivating, luminescent paintings that contain ephemeral glanced moments, creating an ethereal and joyful experience that refers to both popular culture and Renaissance paintings. Above all, she says, ‘a painting should be the beginning of something. The best paintings are those that endure in your mind – because there’s this sense of mystery to them.’ Giovanelli will be creating a new body of work for this solo exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield.
