MELBOURNE.- As part of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art’s annual ACCA International series, presented in association with Melbourne International Arts Festival, ACCA opened the first Australian solo exhibition for the Irish-born, London-based artist Eva Rothschild, ahead of her appearance at the 2019 Venice Biennale where she will represent Ireland.

Eva Rothschild brings together new sculptural commissions with recent work spanning the last decade of the artists’ diverse yet distinctive practice. Shaped by a myriad of influences from minimal art of the 1960s and 70s to classical architecture, spiritualism and pop-culture, Rothschild has developed an international reputation for sculptural forms that are both striking and spare, as sharp geometric shapes morph into flamboyant, enigmatic compositions. Stripped of excess, Rothschild’s abstract arrangements draw the mind into spaces where power, ritual, the architectural and the existential intersect.

Alongside the artist’s interest in the materiality of sculpture – encompassing ideas of form, mass and scale – is a questioning of the physicality of the body and its role both in the act of making, as well as experiencing, an artwork. Rothschild’s striking forms, assembled from a variety of materials including concrete, leather, jesmonite, fabric and plastic, encourage an energetic as well as aesthetic response from the viewer, as they navigate their own corporeality in relation to the work, the composition of the exhibition, and the architecture of the gallery. Several works consider the social potential of sculpture as spaces in which to convene and converse; to relax within or, more actively, play.

‘We are excited to bring this renowned international artist and her work to Melbourne at such a critical time in her career,’ said ACCA’s Artistic Director and CEO Max Delany. ‘The exhibition will present three dramatic new commissions created especially for ACCA’s expansive galleries, alongside recent works including the monumental Cosmos 2018.’

Eva Rothschild has exhibited widely since the early 2000s, following post-graduate studies at Goldsmith’s College, London and an earlier degree at the University of Ulster, Belfast. Recent solo exhibitions include Iceberg Hits, Stuart Shave/Modern Art, London, 2018; A Material Enlightenment, 303 Gallery, New Work, 2017; Alternative to Power, The New Art Gallery Walsall, 2016; A Gated Community, Sonneveld House, Rotterdam, 2016; and Sightings, Nasher Sclpture Center, Dallas 2012.

Rothschild was awarded the 2012 Childrens’ Art Commission at London’s Whitechapel Gallery and the 2009 Duveen Commission by Tate Britain. In 2011 she was commissioned to produce a new public work, Empire, for New York’s Public Art Fund.