Artist Spotlight: Victoria Rance
Victoria Rance with her sculpture, Wedding Dress (2010) and Cloak of Invisibility (2008), at the opening of ‘If not now, when? Generations of women in sculpture in Britain 1960-2023’ at the Saatchi Gallery, London
We, the team at the New Art Centre, were so pleased to attend the opening of ‘If not now, when? Generations of women in sculpture in Britain 1960-2023’ at the Saatchi Gallery in London.
As part of this exhibition, which explores the lives of women sculptors in Britain during a significant period of social and artistic change are works by Victoria Rance, Wedding Dress (2010), Cloak of Invisibility (2008) and The Cloak of Invisibility with Clare Whistler (2010).
Along the same themes of shielding and protecting, which take centre stage in Victoria Rance’s practice, we currently have Pulpit (2006) here in the Sculpture Park. A response to pulpits in Georgian churches along the Strand in London, where Victoria Rance saw that their height and form changed over time. Pulpit offers a place to address an 'audience'; and as seen in the image below, the stone structure of our summer house acts as an ideal space.
Victoria Rance, Pulpit (2006) installed in the Summer House at Roche Court Sculpture Park.
Left: Victoria Rance, Wedding Dress (2010) installed at the Saatchi Gallery for the exhibition: ‘If not now, when? Generations of women in sculpture in Britain 1960-2023’.
Insight from Victoria Rance
“I first met Madeleine in 1993 at her gallery at Sloane Street, when on the advice of Len McComb I called in with some slides. I was told that she had just driven up from Wiltshire, so I was very ready to go away, but her assistant told her about me, she came upstairs to see me. She was very kind, looked at my slides, told me she was starting to show work outside in the garden of Roche Court in Wiltshire, and she picked out ‘Woman 1989’. That year it happened to be on the back cover of the International Women’s Art Diary, published by The Women’s Press.
“I then took it down to Roche Court where it was shown on the terrace outside the house. I went down for the private view and was overwhelmed by the hospitality there. Everyone was greeted and fed lunch with home-made food and home-grown salads, cakes and pickled walnuts. The bluebells were out, and we loved the visit.
“I had two small children then, aged 2 and 5 and the remarkable thing, in direct contrast to my previous gallery experience, was that they were always welcomed with open arms. Madeleine would write a note by hand on the (pre email) letters to me “do bring the children down.” While I sited a sculpture Madeleine had them in the playroom and showed them toys and cakes and they remember it now very fondly.
“Every year a new piece of sculpture was selected which varied in size and material, and my photographs usually had my children in them. I showed annually at Roche Court every year until 2005. I had had my third child by then, and I had begun to make less weather resistant, more interior works, and more of my sculpture to wear series. I have been so pleased to reconnect and be showing Pulpit this year, and love to hear how 3,000 children and others who visited the sculpture park this year, have enjoyed interacting with it, immediately understanding its purpose.”
Detail: Victoria Rance, Pulpit, 2006
Victoria Rance graduated with a BA honours in Fine Art from Newcastle University in 1983, and subsequently an MA from Kingston University in 2009. The artist is currently based at APT Studios in Deptford, London. She was the 2003/4 winner of The Mark Tanner Award for Sculpture, and her work is characterised by interactivity, sculpture and art that the viewer can interact with either physically or in the imagination.
Selected solo exhibitions include The Night Horse and the Holy Baboon at the Cello Factory, London (2017); Creek Dreams, Seager Gallery, London (2022); In Real Life at Cable Depot, Woolwich, London (2021); Spire, The Economist Plaza, London (2000); and Firebird, Cable Depot at Platforms Project, Athens (2022).
About the exhibition:
The exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery is the culmination of the feminist research project, Hepworth’s Progeny: Generations of Women in Sculpture in Britain, 1960 – 2022, carried out in 2022 by The Hepworth Wakefield in collaboration with art historian Griselda Pollock and sculptor Lorna Green, working with Yorkshire-based curatorial researchers Anna Douglas and Kerry Harker. The project revisited research into women artists working in the expanding field of sculpture undertaken in the late 1980s by Green in her M.Phil thesis, The Position and Attitudes of Contemporary Women Sculptors in Britain 1987-89 at The University of Leeds.
Divided into three chapters, the exhibition explores time as an everyday lived experience marked by the evolving cycles directly affecting women.
Exhibiting Artists: Phyllida Barlow, Glenys Barton, Shirley Cameron, Annie Cattrell, Helen Chadwick, Lorraine Clarke, Fran Cottell, Katrina Cowling, Deborah Duffin, Carol Farrow, Sheila Gaffney, Rose Garrard, Lorna Green, Mandy Havers, Bridget Heriz, Michele Howarth, Permindar Kaur, Rosie Leventon, Lilane Lijn, Kim Lim, Renate Meyer, Cornelia Parker, Christine Kowal Post, Victoria Rance, Freddie Robins, Veronica Ryan, Amy Stephens, Pamela Storey, Shelagh Wakely, Lois Williams.