13 June–14 September 2014
The Hepworth Wakefield
Gallery Walk
Wakefield
West Yorkshire WF1 5AW
Free admission
On 13 June, The Hepworth Wakefield opens the highly anticipated first UK presentation of the major survey exhibition Franz West: Where is my Eight?
This will be The Hepworth Wakefield’s largest exhibition since the gallery opened three years ago, with seven out of the ten David Chipperfield-designed gallery spaces showing West’s work. Where is my Eight? will present a loosely chronological survey of Franz West’s artistic output, focusing on his combination pieces, which the artist worked on throughout his prolific career. These combine and re-combine individual works into a multitude of different configurations. The combi-pieces offer a direct insight into West’s complex and multi-layered output, including his “Adaptives,” furniture, sculpture, videos and works on paper.
Visitors can experience the works on a number of levels, from a psychological and intellectual exchange to a physical interaction. This will include an opportunity to use his signature “Adaptives” (Passstücke) works. Intended by West to ”adapt” to the body, they offer ever-changing results that depend on the visitor or wearer, time and context.
In the true spirit of Franz West, arguably one of the most influential sculptors of the 20th century, the exhibition Where is my Eight? has itself been adapted for its summer presentation at The Hepworth Wakefield. A unique intervention of West’s work will take place in the Hepworth Family Gift, our centrepiece collection display that features many of Hepworth’s plaster prototypes. This addition to the exhibition investigates the connections between the work of Franz West and Wakefield-born Hepworth. It places their work in parallel to explore the use of plaster as a creative material; the significance of the studio environment; the repeated return to reconfiguring and adapting previous works, including the combination of several pieces, and the intended physical experience of the works of art.
Franz West: Where is my Eight? was initiated and co-developed with mumok (Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna) and with Franz West with great enthusiasm before his death in July 2012. Eva Badura-Triska, Curator at mumok and Head of the Archiv Franz West, knew the artist from the early 1980s and collaborated with him on various occasions, organising West’s first retrospective in 1996 at the museum in Vienna. She also developed this exhibition with West before he died and said: “I’m so pleased we’re able to realise this highly anticipated major UK showing of West’s varied, influential and prolific practice with The Hepworth Wakefield. It’s a timely celebration and appraisal of his very unique approach to art, with works that invite using the gallery spaces not only for experience, association, consideration and reflection, but also for a participatory conversation and social interaction.”
Simon Wallis, Director of The Hepworth Wakefield said: “We’re delighted to exhibit this major survey by such a significant and influential artist in Yorkshire this summer. The show will have some fascinating resonances with our sculpture collection.”
Franz West: Where is my Eight? is supported by The Henry Moore Foundation, Crown Fine Art & Austrian Cultural Forum London.
