Alice Channer, Alison Wilding & Louisa Buck in Conversation

Two recently opened exhibitions – A Living Collection and Rhythm, Dance and Everything – showcase large-scale, newly acquired sculptures that have been donated to Wakefield’s art collection.

Alison Wilding’s monumental sculpture Stormy Weather (1987) – is constructed of sheets of smooth galvanised steel of differing heights and grey tones, interlocked around a pitted bronze base – it was gifted by the artist in 2025 and is on display in A Living Collection for the first time since its acquisition.

In 2013 Alison Channer was commissioned by The Hepworth Wakefield to make a new body of work for her solo exhibition, Invertebrates, which included Homo Sapiens (Large) now on display in Rhythm, Dance and Everything. The prodigious work was gifted by Channer last year.

In celebration of The Hepworth Wakefield’s 15th birthday year, both exhibiting artists will be in conversation with writer and broadcaster Louisa Buck.

Alice Channer

For two decades, Alice Channer’s work has taken feminist critiques of minimalism as a foundation upon which to build a sculptural practice. Channer has shown at extensively at institutions and galleries nationally and internationally, and her work is held in public and private collections worldwide. She is represented by Konrad Fischer Galerie, DE

“Through a combination of determination, fearlessness and curiosity, Channer has found ways to infiltrate the realm of production, to ask questions about the nature of materiality and the formation of subjecthood from within, learning to speak of the tools and techniques that shape our experience of the material world, and our place within it, in their own tongue” Rosanna McLaughlin

Alison Wilding

Since graduating from the RCA in 1973, Alison Wilding (b. Blackburn 1948) has followed her own path, one where materials have no hierarchy but are valued for their capacity to transform. Her sculptures range in scale from a small hand-held object to the (almost) monumental. Key words in Wilding’s mostly abstract practice are: asymmetry, shadowing, concealment and disclosure. Wilding’s sculpture is in major public collections; she has exhibited widely and was twice nominated for the Turner Prize in 1988 and 1992.

“The sculptures give off a sense of time and place crumpled, a collapse that pushes us into the present, directly. Ancient and modern materials collide, drawing out streams of consciousness.” Rosie Cooper

Louisa Buck

Louisa Buck is a writer and broadcaster on contemporary art. She is a Contributing Editor and London Contemporary Art Correspondent for The Art Newspaper and a regular reviewer and commentator on BBC radio and TV. She has written catalogue essays for Tate, Whitechapel Gallery, ICA London, MCA Australia, The Hepworth Wakefield and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, among others.

Her books include Moving Targets 2: A User’s Guide to British Art Now (Tate 2000); Owning Art: The Contemporary Art Collector’s Handbook (co-authored with Judith Greer) (Cultureshock Media 2006) and Commissioning Contemporary Art : A Handbook for Curators, Collectors and Artists was published by Thames & Hudson in October 2012. Louisa was a judge for the 2005 Turner Prize and is a founding member of The Gallery Climate Coalition.