Over the last year public sculpture has become a hugely controversial issue. No longer passive objects that we simply walk past on our streets, public sculptures are part of a vigorous debate about contemporary society – who is commemorated and

Sculpting Lives: Cathie Pilkington

Nov 30th, 2021 34m 30s

'The thing about my work is that there is a tension between a passionate love and engagement with the traditions of the past and a complete impatience with their irrelevance and it’s trying to hold those things in tension and trying to engage p

Sculpting Lives: Alison Wilding

Nov 23rd, 2021 31m 17s

Alison Wilding emerged into the art world in the 1980s making powerful sculptural statements out of a myriad of materials. Taking sculpture out of the museum and off the plinth, Wilding’s work is some of the most enigmatic and beguiling sculptu

Sculpting Lives: Gertrude Hermes

Nov 16th, 2021 38m 27s

'She did cause a bit of a revolution in the Royal Academy, which has been only to the good,' Anne Desmet, R.A.Gertrude Hermes was one of the most experimental sculptors of the twentieth century. She also changed the way women artists were tre

Sculpting Lives: Veronica Ryan

Nov 9th, 2021 36m 51s

'I have been preoccupied all my life with a "sense of belonging." Growing up with an awareness of "being apart" has certainly defined who I am now. However, that alienation was in part to do with constantly moving – my parents never stayed in o

Sculpting Lives: Dora Gordine

Nov 2nd, 2021 39m 55s

“Sculpture has a vital, important message” Dora Gordine (1895-1991)When Dora Gordine died in 1991 leaving her Studio House to the nation, many people, including museum curators, assumed she had been dead for many years. How did an artist des

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S2: Sculpting Lives Season Two Trailer

Oct 25th, 2021 56s

Launching on 2nd November 2021, the second series of the Sculpting Lives podcast features episodes on Dora Gordine, Gertrude Hermes, Veronica Ryan, Alison Wilding and Cathie Pilkington. At a moment when public sculpture is the subject of conten

Sculpting Lives: Rana Begum

Apr 21st, 2020 39m 21s

“I don’t want to use a language that really segregates people. I don’t want to use a language that makes them think about gender – if they are looking at a female artist or a male artist.” Rana Begum. Rana was born in Bangladesh and came t

Sculpting Lives: Phyllida Barlow

Apr 14th, 2020 43m 57s

“The first time I met him he said ‘Because you’re a woman, I’m not that interested because by the time you’re 30 you’ll be having babies and making jam.’” Phyllida Barlow on meeting her art school tutor Reg ButlerBarlow is one of the best-

Sculpting Lives: Kim Lim

Apr 7th, 2020 39m 28s

“Being female and foreign was never a problem as a student, later I realised that there was a difference, but what was important in the end, was what I did and not where I came from. Race and gender were givens I worked from, perhaps the work

Sculpting Lives: Elisabeth Frink

Mar 31st, 2020 40m 6s

Dame Elisabeth Frink, R.A. (1930-1993)“She respected herself. She took herself seriously and she took the work seriously, due to the nature of the work. She knew what it was she wanted to explore.” Annette Ratuszniak, Curator, Frink Estat

Sculpting Lives: Barbara Hepworth

Mar 24th, 2020 49m 42s

“Hepworth... didn’t see herself as a feminist at all and didn’t see herself as ‘a pioneering woman’, she just felt she was a pioneering sculptor.” Stephen Feeke, curator and writer. Barbara Hepworth was born in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, i

Trailer

Sculpting Lives: Trailer

Mar 16th, 2020 51s

Dame Barbara Hepworth, Dame Elisabeth Frink, Kim Lim, Phyllida Barlow, and Rana Begum - some of the most globally well-known British artists are women sculptors.Conversely, the profession and practice of sculpture was seen by many throughou

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