Alison Jacques presents ‘Music to My Eyes’, an exhibition of new work by Sheila Hicks and the artist’s third solo show at the gallery. The exhibition anticipates a major solo show at The Hepworth Wakefield (April 2022), curated by Andrew Bonacina, the artist’s first survey in a UK museum.
‘Music to My Eyes’ responds to Hicks’s lifelong relationship with colour and thread. Throughout her 70-year career, which continues to flourish, the Nebraska-born, Paris-based artist has endeavoured to bestow upon fibre an independent voice, allowing form, colour and texture to dictate its own progression through space. As Hicks notes: ‘Thread is the universal language. It could become a hammock, or a fishing net, or a hat, or a home… It’s the first thing you feel in the morning when you wake up in your bed sheets, then you step on a rug, you pick up a towel…’
Hicks’s third solo exhibition at Alison Jacques centres around bas-relief sculptures in various natural fibres – linen, cotton, silk – that encourage a certain manner of visual listening. ‘Usually, sound enters through your ears,’ Hicks says of these newly produced works, ‘but I invite participation and perception through your eyes. One can detect subtle harmonies, discover intricate structures, complex sequences, and enjoy an infinite range of colours, as when you listen to music.’
