On the morning I hurry to If Not Now, When? at The Hepworth Wakefield, with its urgent request for my attention, I get the sense that time is rushing by as I recall the first time I visited the gallery over 10 years ago. Time is also a preoccupation for the artists who participated in two surveys – led by Lorna Green in 1988 and Griselda Pollock (alongside Green) in 2022 – into the practices, challenges and approaches of women working in sculpture. In their responses, they think about how seasons of caregiving can pause and propel, how the restrictions of gender can cause them to fall out of step with the contemporary art world and how time itself can interact with materials and making.
Work by a select number of the artists that contributed to either survey appears in If Not Now, When? and offers a snapshot into the changing concerns of people with lived experiences as women (including transgender and non-binary people) over the past 30 years. Split into three time-related categories – In Women’s Time, Tumbling Through Time and The Time Is Now – the exhibition is a cacophony of textures, forms and figures. At first glance, the works seem disparate; Katrina Cowling’s curves of glowing neon glass compete with Cornelia Parker’s floating steel coffee pots; Pamela Storey’s tiny wire figure balances high above heads while Permindar Kaur’s pierced dolls line up across the wall and Phyllida Barlow’s heap of bubbling black bitumen and rubber contrasts with Lois Williams’ soft, furry forms.
But the overarching theme of time holds them together, and it is open-ended enough to allow for a myriad of unrestricted conversations while acknowledging the very specific role time plays in women’s lives as inhabitants of bodies that adhere to cycles. Take Amy Stephens’ Divine Matter, for example. A glistening chunk of marble pierces a pristine steel plinth; the organic form within a constructed frame embodies the passing of time as ancient natural elements are mined and manipulated for human creations. Echoes of Divine Matter can be found across the space in Lorraine Clarke’s iDoletta’s Birthing Chair and Christine Kowal Post’s Amazon Giving Birth – suddenly the emerging marble looks reminiscent of something quite different, but just as natural and historic.
It is these tiny yet unlikely links that make If Not Now, When? so enticing. Pathways of conversation dash out all over the gallery. Helen Chadwick – who was a respondent to the first survey – is represented in photographs and the script from In the Kitchen, her performance where a series of models function as part of kitchen appliances. The domestic setting speaks to Renate Meyer’s embroidered food packets that narrate childhood trauma and sexism, and the concept of a body, bound and pushed into a specific shape is also apparent in Victoria Rance’s steel wedding dress.
Inevitably, much of what binds the works is the uphill struggle of working as a sculptor in a male-dominated field. Kowal Post’s chiselled limewood warriors – one of which is menstruating while the other births a baby – both narrate the reality of the female experience, while defiantly standing against the limitations of what is seen as a woman’s artistic field. Kowal Post said in 1989: “If females were brought up to learn about construction, wielding, carpentry etc, there would be more women using these techniques now.” Sometimes women purposefully lean into the materials that are seen as more “feminine” – Freddie Robins knits “bad mother” across a knitting needle bag and Michele Howarth sews a lifesize, female mannequin where the folding material doubles as sagging skin with the words “She Still Calls Herself a Mrs” emblazoned beneath it.
There is also plenty of space for these artists to explore universal ideas that have nothing to do with gender. Shelagh Wakely’s dessert trolley of gilded fruit ponders on the literal passing of time as these glistening objects slowly rot and disintegrate; Deborah Duffin constructs a meandering loop of cables from electronic waste to address the very pressing issue of disposable materials, while Shirley Cameron’s wooden nuclear bomb is pure political activism. And Parker’s 2022 work Endless Coffee – that sees a line of 13 flat silver coffee pots hung on wire across the gallery – is visually arresting, asking little of the viewer but to stop and marvel at these captivating shapes as they peacefully float over the concrete floor.
If Not Now, When? demands the title of this exhibition. Here’s hoping that “now” can extend to “next year” and “the year after”, too, for these sculptures that challenge materiality and experiment with narrative all while expanding the expectations of what a sculptor can be.
If Not Now, When? Generations of Women in Sculpture in Britain, 1960-2022 is at The Hepworth Wakefield until 24 September
