Exhibition

Yinka Shonibare MBE: FABRIC-ATION

Yorkshire Sculpture Park , West Yorkshire, United Kingdom
02 Mar 2013 - 01 Sep 2013

Taking place in three of YSP’s indoor galleries and the open air, FABRIC–ATION features over 30 vibrant works from the period 2002 – 2013 including sculpture, film, photography, painting and collage. The show  traces Yinka Shonibare’screative development over the past decade at a time when he is increasingly active in creating work for public space.

Two major commissions, the first works in a new series for the UK, premiere in the Park’s Arcadian landscape. Standing over six metres tall,  Wind Sculptures  (2013) are richly coloured, painted with Shonibare’s signature batik-inspired surface pattern. Although constructed in fibreglass, they appear fluid like fabric caught by the breeze. These follow the recent success of Shonibare’s commissions for the Royal Opera House, London (2012) and the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square (2010).

Further new work on show in the galleries includes  Revolution Kids  (2012), half-human, half-animal embodiments of an insurrectionist spirit, waving replicas of Colonel Gaddafi’s golden gun and carrying an obligatory Blackberry. Marking the first time that Shonibare has used taxidermy in his practice, these hybrid figures embody the artist’s response to the London Riots when social media was used as a revolutionary tool, and the 2011 Arab Spring with its overriding sense of transformation through insurgence. These powerful works reflect the currency and topical fervency of Shonibare’s work in this timely exhibition.

Highlights also include two  Flying Machine  sculptures (2012) piloted by fabric-skinned aliens, one of which will be suspended from the ceiling as though coming in to land. Alien Man on Flying Machine  (2011) and  Alien Woman on Flying Machine  (2012) reference the artist’s interest in early flight, space exploration and science fiction while connoting ideas of foreign citizenry and strangeness. Another thematic concern, which particularly resonates with YSP’s 18th century-designed landscape, is Shonibare’s ongoing preoccupation with the historic pursuits of the aristocracy.

Shonibare has described his use of bright batik fabrics as “signifiers of ‘African-ness’ insofar as when people first view the fabric they think of Africa”. Ironically this archetypal, ‘authentic’ African fabric was first massproduced in Holland, based on Indonesian batik, and sold into West Africa in the 19th century. Fabric –ation examines how Shonibare brings together two seemingly irreconcilable tropes in works such as  Little Rich Girls  (2010), where batik fabrics are fashioned into Victorian high-society costumes from the height of the British Empire. The clothed body is at the heart of Shonibare’s practice, also figuring in works such as  Fire,  Water,  Earth, and  Air  (all 2010), and this exhibition explores how Shonibare subverts the ability of clothing to fix identity in place and time.

A new film,  Addio del Passato  (2012) plays in the sublime surroundings of YSP’s 18th century Chapel. This visually seductive and moving piece features a singer in the guise of Lord Nelson’s estranged wife Frances Nisbet, performing Violetta’s poignant death aria of the same name from Giuseppe Verdi’s 19th century opera La Traviata. Shonibare investigates both the possibilities presented by the fanciful re-enactment of historical events and the complex symbolism represented by Admiral Nelson in many of his works. Another example in this exhibition includes  Fake Death  (2011), a photographic series which re-imagines Nelson’s death in painting, including the pre-Raphaelite painter Henry Wallis’s  The Death of Chatterton  (1856);  Cannonball Heaven  (2011).

 

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