Barbara Hepworth: Material Practice in Post-War British Sculpture

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How did the major 20th century British sculptor, Barbara Hepworth, transform her artistic ideas into physical reality? How did she manipulate tools and processes to shape resistant matter, and how do they shape the artist in turn? And how did she work with technicians and artisans to turn her models into finished sculptures?These are fundamental questions to ask about the practice of Hepworth, or indeed any sculptor; yet they remain remarkably little explored. This project will seek to begin answering them by bringing together diverse sources of expertise to bear on the unique collection of the Hepworth Wakefield (THW), one of the north of England's most important museums of modern and contemporary art. While most other major holdings of Hepworth's work consist primarily of finished works, the core of THW's collection is the Hepworth Family Gift, is a unique archive of preparatory, technical and personal material. This includes plaster prototypes, bronze casts and carvings, prints and drawings, tools and materials, recipe books and notes/journals. There is further enriched by the loan of a significant portion of Hepworth's personal library. At the moment, this remarkable collection remains poorly understood because of the lack of coordinated research into Hepworth's materials, techniques and processes. Much knowledge exists, but it is currently siloed among curators, conservators, practising artists, technical art historians, and academic art historians. The result is that THW finds it challenging to understand and present its rich holdings. This research network will begin to address this situation by bringing together the diverse specialisms, skills and fields of expertise needed to understand Hepworth's material processes and their relation to her broader cultural aims and interests. It will enable academic art historians, curators at THW and elsewhere, practicing artists, conservators, technical art historians, technicians and engineers to pool and coordinate their methods and areas of expertise. In doing so they will generate substantial new knowledge and understanding of Hepworth's work. At the same time, they establish the basis for, and set the agenda for, further more targeted transdisciplinary research into Hepworth's material practice. The network will have substantial impacts on the museum and gallery sector, on conservation practice and on the wide audience for Hepworth's work. It will feed directly into a forthcoming special retrospective - the largest Hepworth exhibition ever staged - and enable intervention into the permanent displays of Hepworth's work at THW. In doing so it will contribute to the cultural life and the wider regeneration of Wakefield. No less significantly, it will also provide a model and foundation for collaborative research into material practice in the arts, essential if we are to gain a genuine grasp of the material aspects of artistic production. Art historians, while often enthusiastic participants in the 'material turn' in their discipline, have ironically tended to approach the material in highly theoretical ways. As a result, they have tended to prioritise phenomenological and socioeconomic approaches to materiality, while neglecting the immediate physical realities of artistic production. Practicing artists, technical art historians, engineers and art technicians are in direct contact with materials and processes. However, they are often remote from the questions that animate their art historical colleagues. Bringing together scholars and practitioners in the way envisaged by this project will bring these perspectives into dialogue, and show how detailed exploration of material evidence can transform our understanding of artistic production.