Modern British Sculpture - Royal Academy of Arts - 22nd January-7th April

Anthony Caro, Early One Morning, 1962,

I was particularly interested in seeing this exhibition since I made the decision of going into the second year of the BA Sculpture course next academic year.

I was quite impressed by the works in this exhibition, mostly with the works of Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and Anthony Caro. Not sure why a film by Len Lye was at the exhibition and was categorized as sculputre, perhaps for its elasticity of the drawn forms onto the film? However to see something that actually moved distracted me from all the other stationary works. Henry Moore's Reclining Figure was absolutely stunning and made me think of the female figures painted by Picasso, i.e those of Madamoiselles d'Avignon. The hollows spaces of the figure, the sensual shapes of the figure reminds me of a rolling hills landscape. Every single angle offered me with a new perspective , the figure was always evolving although was still the same once your eyes were far enough to contemplate the sculpture in a whole. Barbara Hepworth was also quite inspiring, very similar to Henry Moore, magnificient pieces of work on marble and stone. Anthony Caro's Early One Morning was for me the best piece on the show, it was free, airy and fresh despite being so old,  only a different viewpoint, as in the work of Henry Moore, was just needed to enjoy this work, the work unfolded and expanded into the spectator's space . The zinging orange against the grey colours of the floor made it even more stand up and more effective graphically. Regarding the simple forms and the simplicity of this piece in general I would say that, less is more and Anthony Caro has achieved this in this piece.

I neither enjoyed the early 20th century sculputure at the beginning of the show but either the more contemporary sculputures at the end, like the work of Damien Hirst, which I thought that killing flies in front of people was really savage, I did not see this work as a work of sculputure, perhaps more of a performance.

It was good to see some much "called" sculputure, it did help me to locate my work and understood the possibilities of sculputure. However I did not see any 3D work made out of fabric, most materials were hard as marble, stone, steel, etc... and this made me wondered whether the art world still rejecting needlework as artwork itself and still be categorized as craft. Something what I have also noticed is the little work by female sculptors in the show.  This excentric exhibition had some controversy for not including work from Antony Gormley and Anish Kapoor, but what about the women? Is this really representative of the current state of British sculpture?