The Hepworth Wakefield
The Hepworth Wakefield opened its doors to the public earlier this year. This new museum has become the home for an outstanding collection of British art from the old Wakefield Museum and now a major gift from the Hepworth Estate of over 40 of Barbara Hepworth’s plasters and prototypes for her sculptures.
Eva Rothschild (born 1971, Dublin) is one of the foremost contemporary sculptors working in the UK today. She has attracted international attention for her work which uses a varied lexicon of forms and materials. Wandering Palm was one of a large number of new works made for Rothschild’s solo show Hot Touch, one of the opening exhibitions at the Hepworth Wakefield. Much of Rothschild’s work has been inspired by modern abstraction however for this exhibition she made a number of key figurative works that acted as pivotal linking pieces within the whole. These works suggest a greater emphasis on narrative than is familiar in Rothschild’s work.
Wandering Palm is one of these pivotal works and has been selected to enter the permanent collection for its signficance within Hot Touch, but also for its materiality. The component parts, cast and then assembed to make the sculpture, are familiar objects and it is this very clear representation of process, of casting and making, that resonates in a very interesting way with the existing collection, particularly Hepworth’s hand worked plasters that are on permanent display within the galleries.