Encounters with the figurative sculptures

Sibylle von Halem. 1996

LOCATIONS

Kildrummy Castle, Aberdeenshire, north-east Scotland, July 1995

“GAZEBO”

A ruined, early medieval castle lies enfolded in a landscape of brown hills and dark forests, on the eastern side of the Grampian Mountains.

The castle is a tourist attraction, and every two years it is the site of a sculpture exhibition. You follow the sign posts and park on a stretch of gravel at the foot of a mound. Having bought your ticket, you ascend a steeply curving path, from which the ruin becomes visible from a variety of angles.

Some visitors may resent the intrusion of the twentieth century into their examination of archaeology or their cherished vision of a romantic past: there may be geometric shapes in steel or in granite which “look too much like modern art”.

This year, however, the first thing to take shape as you approach is an edifice which appears to be over-lifesize even before it is identified as a figure.

It stands on a rise above the grassed channel which used to be the moat, commanding a position immediately before the entrance to the castle; it could be made of stone but is improbably filled with spy-holes; it is both held up and confined by a delicate , bristling structure of thin wooden scaffolding.

“GAZEBO” is over eight feet tall, but as you circle it and discover the wooden steps leading to its interior, it reveals that it is not, after all larger than life size: the internal space is made to measure, an encasement for the human body. It could almost be a sarcophagus, animated by being placed upright; though the response it elicits is not a feeling of peace and rest, but rather a profound disquiet.

Standing inside the figure, you are in a strongly defended position: invisible to anyone on the outside, protected by a thick casing of fired clay and an outer layer of wooden fortification, invincible.

The spy-holes pierce the surface on all sides, framing and focusing individual views of the surrounding area for your scrutiny: they are like arrow-slits, each in the shape of a watchful eye.

The dense silence within the piece takes hold of your thoughts, and you ponder the need for this kind of unseen surveillance: is this a defensive object, a fortification from which you can dominate the countryside; or is it a safe haven, something rather more like a home – a protected position from which you look out on the rest of the world?

The view of this piece as having a war-like purpose makes it an object, but when seen as a form of shelter it becomes a place.

At Kildrummy Castle, there is an ambivalence between the two possible readings which may have been imposed by the historical observatory, and a place from which to gaze in wonder.

The notion of “Home” reappears as the title of a very small and unassuming sculpture which lives indoors, but echoes the unease perceived in its much larger cousin.

Only vestigially figurative, it is a form so rudimentary that it could be a counter from a board game, the surface is “carved” or “woven” and pierced by many small blue eyes whose gaze is both nervous and implacable.

The eyes are “looking out”, and thereby prevent us from looking in.

The outer surface and interior void speak of our private and our public lives: the communication between them takes place through what we see and how we are seen.

Saint Mary’s Episcopalian Cathedral, Glasgow, May 1995

“WALK” and “BELVEDERE”

The interior of the church is a hushed and cavernous place of dark wood and soft light. This summer it is host to an exhibition of paintings and sculpture, by around fifteen contemporary Scottish artists.

Most of these works attract attention because they are “on display”; and having been imported from the cool and anonymous environment of an art gallery, they are somewhat at odds with the feel of this space.

Two small ceramic objects , however, located in the South transept, are so much in their natural habitat in this consecrated space that you may have to find their labels in order to associate them with the exhibition.

They seem to breathe easily amongst the deep shadows and lingering memory of insense.

St Mary’s Cathedral is very much in use, and Peter Bevan’s figures are placed in such a way that they are in sympathy with the functions of the building, both when it is empty and also, one suspects during worship.

Although they were not specifically made for this exhibition, they harmonise with the statuary and fittings of the church: during a service they hover at the edge of the congregations line of vision, catching fragments of light from the stained glass windows, while maintaining a respectful and observant distance.

When you enter the church and glance up the long aisles, they appear as small figures on tall pedestals; as they loom and waver into wearing a winding ribbon of text, sharing a space with the Cathedral’s font.

As you approach closely, they become figures again. As personalities, they are self-possessed yet alert, mutely receptive, imposing and demure by turn, according to your frame of mind.

They are figures, but also they are not: small, concentrated nuclei of human form shine through a simple, pared-down outline that is rich with many layers of association.

Their elusiveness conceals a firm intention. You may not know precisely what they are, but they are determined to impress on you the plurality of images they contain.

“BELVEDERE” is a statuesque female figure: russet- coloured, perforated with a pattern of holes. Its surface is dark, containing light – it is entirely permeable, allowing a free and generous passage of light, of air and breath.

The distribution of the holes alludes to domestic utensils, if the piece is seen primarily as an object. When it is viewed as a human figure, they become its clothing: in particular, the long covering veil worn by many Muslim women. The garment is the figure, as much as concealing it.

The perforations, obsessively repeated in the tall-many-sided pedestal supporting the figure, may for a moment raise the question whether this figure has been wounded; though any such impression is swiftly abandoned on closer inspection: Its calm and upright stance radiates confidence and ease, its gesture neither submissive nor forbidding: In a Christian context, it tells of the honoured position of one woman in a Church dominated by men. In its reference to the Islamic world, it challenges the usual Western reaction to the sight of a veiled woman as a person confined and somehow under duress – this figure’s silence signifies pride and not humility, its “armour” of holes a show of strength.

GENESIS

The evolution of the directly figurative sculptures, which are a closely related distinct body of work, was prefigured by a drawing dated 1987: it shows a “Man Weaving His On Basket”, and only his head and arms are still visible within a growing structure of willow withies. He seems to have left no escape route, and will eventually be entombed in, or replaced by the result of his efforts; leaving a simplified and monumental form as a reminder of his presence.

He can be identified as the “father” of the first of the ceramic figures, a piece called “Palanquin” made two years later, immediately after the artists returned from his first visit to India.

It was built “from the inside out” , as if in defiance of the usual practice of working on a sculpture’s outer surface: it was constructed around the artist’s own body, and adopts his initial position of squatting on the floor as he began work. Only as it grew and narrowed at the shoulders did he step outside and regard it as a separate being – the figure’s head, though modelled from without, seems to look inward; its features more like something “sensed” than something “seen”, and the viewer may wonder whether it is in fact aware of the striking red colour of its own face.

It internalises more than it reveals, keeping its thoughts to itself.

The person who made and shaped it has left the scene, and the “shell” that remains cannot walk but can be carried: true to its name, the honoured personage may be carried, even as part of a procession>

The carrying device is an integral part of the sculpture, and opens the dialogue between “figure” and “function” that continues through all the subsequent work in this series, sometimes at low volume, and occasionally amplified as in a work called “INCENSER”.

This is a complex piece of extravagant colour and honed-down form, a perforated hollow object like a sieve, which could contain a body but is ambiguous in outline.

Almost a buddha, it is a still and meditative seated “figure” ending in a surreal frill of form, like an abbreviated skirt, where the knees would be. At this point, the metamorphosis from figure to functional object is made apparent by the pragmatic connotations of a row of lifting-eyes or lugs.

These emphasise the fact that the piece is in two sections, and comes apart to allow access to the interior space: perhaps for the placement of votive candles or indeed incense, or for some more culinary use.

THE BODY AS A CONTAINER FOR MEMORY

The question of use and purpose in a figurative work of art raises endless debates: what is the perceived function of a statue, for example?

To display, to fix and immobilise, to present one view of, to commemorate?

Quite often, to glorify, or to serve as a reminder of the aspirations and preoccupations of a time that has passed; which is why a “statue” with a live and individual message still has the ability to shock.

“BEING AND DESIRE”, made in 1990, is a statue: first modelled and then carved in pure white plaster, its is as solid and static as an Egyptian potentate, cubiform and ancient.

Far from taking pride in an immutable status quo, however, this figure is contained and even rough-edged form speaks of an enforced immobility, its gaze again turned inward.

Though it is white, it seems to live in the dark; and the body is spattered with a text in words and phrases, laboriously carved into its surface with a not-very-sharp instrument.

It describes all the physical attributes of this indistinct figure, and the qualities of light, shadow and surface which reveal them to us. However, the figure is conscious of being bound and limited by its present form of being, and wishes to see its hidden desires acknowledged. The panel in the “seat back” of the figure bears an inscription. This is a personal and emotional lyric, an evocation of memory and longing, which can both beguile and silence anyone who reads it. In a crowded exhibition hall, it becomes an act of courage -  an affirmation of private thoughts in a very public space.

The same psychological fortitude is evident in a figure which expresses a similar sense of claustrophobia, but in this case we are looking at a representation of “another” as opposed to the “self”.

“BELOVED” is an idol made precious with gold – of all the figures in this series this is the most self-conscious, as if constrained by being aware of the observer’s scrutiny.

The figure has been kneeling, and seems to have been caught at an awkward point in the middle of a movement, struck by the force of your gaze, incapable of speech.

This is itself an eloquent examination of the private life of inanimate objects; but this particular figure is about being observed, mutely pointing to the effects of another person’s intense regard on one’s actions and sense of self. The artist describes it as “innocent”, rather than as an accusing victim. The figure appears to be almost without gender, but its painful awareness of its own body as a visual object means that it is more easily identifiable as female.

“BELOVED” , then is she; and she is built up from distinct sections (the legs, the hips and torso; shoulders and arms; and the head), which are heavily reinforced and buttressed where they join. These may be sections of a mould for casting multiples.

This practical device for supporting soft modelling clay has acquired a deliberately emotional and even tragic gesture in the figure – exerting pressure, from the outside, on its most fragile joints and thereby imprisoning it.

There is something of a paradox in this: the very components which support the figure as a physical object, conspire to undermine its strength as a human identity.

FROM WITHIN THE HUMAN BODY

“Beloved” was a visualisation of what could not be expressed in words, but the possible elucidation of events through language is taken up in a positive and even anecdotal vein by one of the pieces we first saw at St. Mary’s Cathedral.

The figure called “Walk” is the narrator of its own story: clothed only in words stamped into its skin, its air of concentration persuades you to follow the text. Circling the piece until you are dizzy you read of a scene witnessed in a crowded railway station in India: a naked man walks down the length of the platform, confident, unimpeded and, although acknowledged, not remarked by anyone.

The sculpture seems driven by an unhurried sense of purpose, striding over a grid of knife-edged wooden slats which separates it from its base, lettering a rhythmic flicker of light pass between them.

The letters look like printer’s type, and recall headlines in tabloid newspapers.

They speak of the Orient’s obsession with forms of clothing, how a garment can both reveal and conceal (holy men who are perfectly attired in nothing but ashes rubbed into the skin; women who are only barely discernible behind the flowing and billowing edifice of a burqa, or veil…)

This close attention to the surface of the body is familiar to anyone who models in clay – the hands building up and refining the “skin”, which contains the volume of the body and is its only visible part.

Peter Bevan’s figurative pieces are hollow, and, like vessels, consist entirely of “skin”. Through hand-building the figures, whether they are small and intimate or colossal and architectural, the artist can retain a close and intensely personal contact with the piece with its needs and susceptibilities.

During the process of construction through touch, the fingers shaping and rubbing over every inch of the surface, the resulting form quite naturally acquires the surface tension, the swell and imminent movement of every living body – the final form may be fixed by a surface, but its intention is for movement and growth, reflecting an innate optimism in living and breathing creatures.

This is a way of working organically, “from the inside out”, both in the physical and in the psychological sense. It is an adjunct to a humanistic view of the body as a place and as an object of use, a vessel holding memories and experiences that can be extremely personal, but can also be shared by others.

Peter Bevan’s sculpture looks at things that can be seen but not often spoken about: not so much a “voice” as a “view”, an intense observation of himself and other people.

His is a level and attentive gaze, which is not a critical scrutiny, but a mark of human generosity.

Sibylle von Halem             January 1996