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Beginning around the turn of the 1980s, a group of British sculptors congregating around the Lisson Gallery in west London began to pioneer new directions in contemporary art. Including names such as Barry Flanagan, Anish Kapoor, Shirazeh Houshiary, Richard Deacon, Tony Cragg, David Nash, Edward Allington and Alan Charlton, these artists were responding to the predominance of Conceptual and Minimal Art in the preceding decades as well as a resurgence of neo-Expressionism in painting. Marking a return to materials with a focus on technique, the artists often worked with stone and wood, carving poetic forms from raw organic materials. David Nash's beech wood Bowl (1988) and Extended Cube (1986) are exceptional examples of this tendency. Indeed, Nash's work is entirely dependent on nature as he ties or grafts found pieces of wood together allowing the material to evolve with time: cracking, expanding and splitting as the grain matures. Shirazeh Houshiary was engaged in a similar practice during this period, working early in her career with straw and earth molded over wooden armatures to create biomorphic sculptural forms. In Breath, Reed, an Invisible Poem (1987), Houshiary employs copper and brass in a lyrical and elegantly curved sculpture. Deeply influenced by Sufi doctrine, it symbolizes the spiritual transcendence of materiality. Edward Allington emerged over the same period, carrying out strategies influenced by conceptual and environmental art. In his Sculpture: Ideal Standard Forms (Oriental Version) (1985) the artist created an installation using aluminium, plaster and Styrofoam examining the contrast between ideal symbols and real sculptural forms.

Hannah Collins (B. 1956)

Untitled (Ants on tablecloth)

Details

Hannah Collins (B. 1956)
Untitled (Ants on tablecloth)
gelatin silver print mounted on cotton
116 7/8 x 71½in. (297 x 182cm.)
Executed in 1989

Provenance

Galerie Xavier Hufkens, Brussels.
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1989.

Exhibited

Barcelona, Centre d'art Santa Monica, Hannah Collins, 1993 (illustrated, p. 50).

Special Notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

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