Alice Channer (b. 1977, Oxford, UK) presented a new body of figurative work created especially for this exhibition.
Collectively entitled Invertebrates, the works were arranged as a long, low, horizontal spine that loosely took its form from the curving skeletons of snakes and other reptiles. Her work also took inspiration from invertebrate jellyfish, squid and other deep-sea boneless life forms that have a recognisable form but are dependent on their aquatic environment to provide their body-shape and function.
Through the modification of flat surfaces by pleating, curving, stretching and contracting, Channer explores sculptural properties of volume, dimension and weight. This is further developed through the play of materials in her works whereby solids will be used in their liquid or ‘invertebrate’ state. Stainless steel, silk, aluminium, Perspex, bronze, elastic, marble, polyurethane resin and hi-tech lamé, are presented as liquids that clot, thin, coagulate, melt and solidify.
Alice Channer and The Hepworth Wakefield comissioned writer Kari Rittenbach to create a poem entitled Invertebrates.
