MELBOURNE.- Important sculptures by the late Inge King AM and Norma Redpath OBE are being featured alongside works from 11 contemporary sculptors in a major autumn exhibition at McClelland, highlighting the impact of modernism on current artistic practice.

“A thousand different angles”, 21 February – 5 June 2022, includes works by Fiona Abicare, Samara Adamson-Pinczewski, Marion Borgelt, Consuelo Cavaniglia, Natasha Johns-Messenger, Inge King, Sanné Mestrom, Noriko Nakamura, Nabilah Nordin, Louise Paramor, Kerrie Poliness, Norma Redpath, and Meredith Turnbull.

The exhibition has been set across both McClelland’s indoor galleries and outdoor sculpture park and includes works of diverse scale from small maquettes to monumental public sculpture in a bushland environment.

Powerful female voices in the then male-dominated sphere of modern industrial sculpture, King and Redpath were integral to the Melbourne-based Centre Five group of artists, which was influential in fostering greater public awareness of contemporary sculpture while integrating large-scale art with architecture in the public realm. McClelland continues this mission through numerous public art projects today, partnering with the corporate and government sectors to commission major contemporary sculptures for new infrastructure projects.

Curators Lisa Byrne and Simon Lawrie say the title of the exhibition is taken from Inge King’s observation that ‘sculpture is drawing from a thousand different angles’.

“Inge King and Norma Redpath are central to Australian modernist sculpture. We foreground their legacy in conjunction with eleven contemporary artists who extend the conceptual and aesthetic concerns in King and Redpath’s practice, and who expand the legacy of modernism in a contemporary context.

“This exhibition explores the dynamic spatial properties of sculpture in relation to both environmental context and the contingent experience of the viewer.

“We investigate how the concept of spatial practice often relies on the viewer – the viewer’s physical connection to the work and the exploration of space around the object in relation to the viewer.

“The exhibition invites the viewer to consider how the artist is engaging the broader context of the art object, including the perception of the viewer.

“In the context of modernist sculpture, what was traditionally a discrete object-based medium gradually expanded to incorporate the environmental and architectural framing as well as the viewer’s dynamic phenomenological experience of the work.

“In different ways, King and Redpath can be seen as important agents in this development. They provide context for contemporary explorations of sculpture as an expanded spatial practice.

“Encompassing a wide variety of media including sculpture, architecture, design, installation, video, and performance, the term spatial practice goes beyond more traditional distinctions between sculpture and painting and can describe contemporary forms of artmaking more accurately.

“The contemporary works help us to reflect on and re-evaluate the modernist innovations of King and Redpath,” Lisa Byrne said.

“A thousand different angles” is accompanied by extensive public and education programs across the School Term 1 of 2022 and into the holidays.