The residence of Sigmund Freud serves as a fitting space to showcase the work of sculptor Louise Bourgeois, whose exhibition The Return of the Repressed explores her thirty years of ambivalent attachment to psychoanalysis.

As an artist who drew on her childhood experiences, French-American Bourgeois was primed to blossom in the Fifties, but her path was impeded by the precipitous domination of abstract expressionism, spearheaded by the ‘macho’ art of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko.  Subsequently, only four commissions for one-woman shows between 1953 and 1978 followed.

Her surrealist artistry with its lack of signature style and use of materials including meat, wood and latex rubber, was completely divergent to the idealism of classical sculpture.

She remained on the periphery because the art world found her profound technique and emotionally fragile inner world difficult to negotiate and comprehend.

Nonetheless, in 1982, at the age of 70, Louise Bourgeois, the artist who utilised her visceral pain to awaken a higher state of consciousness in the viewer, was given a retrospective by the Museum of Modern Art in New York; thereby embracing this gloriously fearless late bloomer with mainstream acclaim which had eluded her for so long.

Louise Bourgeois: The Return of the Repressed is at the Freud Museum until  27th May 2012

Words by Dawn Daniels

freud.org.uk

Top Image copyright Irving Penn

Tags: Freud Museum, Jackson Pollock, Louise Bourgeois, Mark Rothko, The Return of the Repressed

It’s easy to misjudge quite how fertile Britain’s current crop of women sculptors is. Rather than headlining shows, female sculptors are more often side-lined by the art establishment in favour of big name male ‘blockbusters’. In the world of sculpture, figures like the late and great Louise Bourgeois are rare.

Clearly things need to change. And so, the Pangolin gallery have stepped forward and organised an all-female show, Women Make Sculpture, that celebrates the UK’s raw and polished sculpting talent. With pieces from established names like Sarah Lucas to emerging ones like Polly Morgan, known for her fragile taxidermy. The aim of the show isn’t to lump women into one easy gender category, but to give them the room to showcase their diversity.

As the Director of Pangolin London, Polly Bielecka says, “The exhibition is not intended to tackle gender superiority; rather it hopes to question whether female artists bring something different to contemporary British sculpture.”

From Almuth Tebbenhoff’s intricate steel wall pieces to Deborah Van der Beek’s horse head – sculpted from the detritus of war – there’s a wide enough mix of ideas and materials to prove that when women make sculpture it has everything and nothing to do with their sex.

Women Make Sculpture is at Pangolin from May 19 to June 18 2011.
pangolinlondon.com

Tags: Almuth Tebbenhoff, Deborah Van der Beek, Louise Bourgeois, Pangolin, Pangolin London, Polly Bielecka, Polly Morgan, Sarah Lucas, Women Make Sculpture

It’s all about the sublime.

BUY 

BUY 

Tags: Amie Dicke, Amy Sackville, Annie Morris, Boo Saville, Cristina Kruse, Daisy Garnett, Francesca Beard, Kate Tempest, KT Auleta , linder sterling, Louise Bourgeois, Louise Stern, Polly Morgan, tracey emin