Installation view of These Mad Hybrids: John Hoyland and Contemporary Sculpture, RWA Bristol, 2 February – 12 May 2024. Photo by Tim Bowditch.
John Hoyland and Hew Locke in These Mad Hybrids: John Hoyland and Contemporary Sculpture at The Royal West of England Academy, through 12th May 2024.
The exhibition challenges the boundaries of what both sculpture and painting can be and how they speak to each other. The featured artists share a common fascination and appreciation for colour, materiality, and creative process. They work with materials ranging from cement or synthetic fabric to glitter, combining human and animal bodies, furniture, everyday objects and architecture into playful, bold, new sculptural hybrids.
These Mad Hybrids positions a group of ceramic sculptures made by abstract painter John Hoyland RA in dialogue with a spectacular, international, assembly of contemporary sculpture by artists including Phyllida Barlow and Hew Locke. A display of paintings by Hoyland shows the dynamic connection between his sculptures and paintings.
Curated by sculptor Olivia Bax in collaboration with Sam Cornish and Wiz Patterson Kelly of The John Hoyland Estate, the exhibition is inspired by a group of unique ceramic sculptures by Hoyland, which he affectionately called his "mad little hybrids." This is the first public display of the ceramics since 1994, and their first presentation alongside Hoyland's abstract paintings from the 1960s to 2010s.
February 3, 2024
