Collector’s Choice I Alison Wilding
Alison Wilding
Inversion I, 1999
Alabaster and silicone rubber
18 x 71 x 2.5 cm
7 ⅛ x 2ft 4 x 1 in.
The New Art Centre has shown Alison Wilding for many years and her work, on every scale, is always interesting, thought provoking, and beautifully made. Her capacity to explore different materials is an integral part of her ability to expand her communication with her audience. Alison Wilding’s solo exhibition, Testing the Objects of Affection, opens today at Alison Jacques in London.
With a career spanning over 50 years, Alison Wilding OBE RA is one of the most important sculptors of the post-war period. Born in Blackburn in 1948, her work displays a recurring interest in balance, weight, line, material and concealment. Above all else, she is a sculptor of materials and shadow, continually experimenting with the limits of making, pushing conventional values and form.
Alison Wilding studied at Nottingham College of Art in 1966 and subsequently at Ravensbourne College of Art and Design from 1967 to 1970. She first began exhibiting in the 1970s after studying at the Royal College of Art from 1970 to 1973. From small table-top or wall-mounted works to colossal installations, Wilding’s practice is marked by her playful and intelligent use of materials and proportion, using alabaster, wood, steel, paper, beeswax, silk, paints, lead and sand.
Wilding was twice shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1988 and 1992, and in 1999 was made a Royal Academician. She currently lives and works in London.
Alison Wilding
Her Furnace, 1987
Patinated copper and brass
86.5 x 39.5 x 35.5 cm
2ft 10 x 1ft 3 ¼ x 1ft 2 in.
Alison Wilding
Shrubs 1, 2019
Fumed oak and brass
55 x 20 x 9.8 cm
1ft 9 ⅝ x 8 x 4 in.
Wilding has exhibited widely, with solo shows at MoMA, New York in 1987; the Serpentine, London in 1985 and a major retrospective at Tate Liverpool in 1991. Recent exhibitions include Sculpture in the 1980s at Tate Britain in 2021; Alison Wilding: On The Edge, University of Cambridge in 2019; and Alison Wilding at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester in 2018. She is acclaimed both for her small-scale work and for her public commissions, with notable recent examples including Still Water, 2018, a public memorial fountain for UK citizens affected by terrorism overseas, and Shimmy, a public artwork at 10 New Burlington Street, 2014.
Alison Wilding’s work is included in numerous major international public and private collections, including Tate Britain, London; Leeds City Art Gallery; the Scottish National Gallery of Art; the Victoria and Albert Museum; the British Museum; the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; the Arts Council of Great Britain; the Musée de Beaux Arts, Calais, France and the British Council.
