VACMA: Brandon Logan

My award was used to fund a research trip to the exhibition ‘Sheila Hicks: Off Grid’ at the Hepworth Wakefield in West Yorkshire. This took place in early August of 2022. The experience of seeing ‘in the flesh’ works by an artist I have long admired en masse and on hugely varied scale was moving and significant in a lasting way, both personally and professionally, and several months on is still returning to me in unexpected moments. It is impossible to replicate the experience of seeing works which are as deeply physical as Hicks’ in reality and it is an opportunity I am very grateful for. After letting others know of my trip I was repeatedly urged to visit several other sites in the area. Taking this advice seriously and being unsure of when I might have the chance again, alongside my time at the Hepworth Wakefield I also managed to visit and see exhibitions at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Leeds Art Gallery, and the Henry Moore Institute. It was a joy to be acquainted with the artistic institutions of West Yorkshire, and the Robert Indiana display at YSP was an unexpected but thrilling highlight.

My particular fixation with Hicks’ work was centred around the Minimes, her small, palm-sized works, and since seeing them in Wakefield I have found a kind of self-assurance in my commitment to my own small works. There is a particular tension to be enjoyed between the sense of a very small work being the perfect thing with which to experiment at minimal cost and risk, and yet also the capacity for small works to be resolved in themselves, to have a gravitas and intensity which goes beyond a simple test-piece. Though I didn’t anticipate the timing, a small work of my own was shown in late 2022-early 2023 in a show in London called ‘Maquettes,’ alongside works by the likes of Richard Tuttle and Robert Moon. The show itself centred around this dichotomy which was brought to the fore of my mind at the Hicks exhibition.

There has arisen a new series within a series of my small works, titled the Kisses, each a simple meeting of two colours, complimentary or at odds, which in their simplicity have a gestural quality, despite the process which is itself lengthier and less easily-lent to a sense of immediacy which might be found in traditional drawing and painting methods. These works are ongoing and will hopefully form a significant segment of my practice in years to come.

Something which I had not anticipated being taken by are the incredibly large-scale works which Hicks has made for public spaces. I have in the back of my mind considered at times if my work might lend itself to commissions which occasionally arise but have been intimidated by the scale often required – I now find myself considering these opportunities more seriously, and wonder if there is space to grow quite literally and metaphorically.

I had hoped to perhaps launch myself into a personal enquiry, pursuing the relationship between Hicks’ work and that of Julius Bissier, and indeed these thoughts are ongoing and I am beginning to seek out ways to view Bissier’s work, having only ever seen the one small example in the Pier Arts Centre – in this sense the project is very much ongoing.

Quite simply the funding made the trip possible, to travel solely with the purpose of viewing art is not something I would have been able to consider otherwise at that moment.