Cerith Wyn Evans has won The Hepworth Prize For Sculpture now in its second edition. This year’s shortlisted artists were Michael Dean, Mona Hatoum, Phillip Lai, Magali Reus and Cerith Wyn Evans. Each artist created a new work for display in the exhibition.
Launched in 2016 on the occasion of The Hepworth Wakefield’s 5th birthday, this £30,000 biennial award was established to recognise a British or UK-based artist of any age, at any stage in their career who has made a significant contribution to the development of contemporary sculpture. The 2016 prize was awarded to Helen Marten.
Simon Wallis, Director of The Hepworth Wakefield, said: ‘We created the Prize to encourage wider engagement and debate regarding sculpture – one of the most significant and rewarding visual art forms of our time. The breadth of work that will be on display explores the distinct approach to sculpture taken by each artist, and it will allow our broad audience to experience the engaging richness of this powerful art form’.
Cerith Wyn Evans (b1958) debuted a major new work comprising two intersecting arcs of glass crystal musical flutes suspended in the gallery space. Powered by two mechanical lungs that inhale and exhale according to a specially-conceived algorithm, the 40 flutes are individually pitched to perform Wyn Evans’s new composition. Wyn Evans often incorporates sound into his work and orchestrates his installations within architectural structures to influence the audience’s spatial experience. His interdisciplinary and multi-layered practice fuses intellectual rigour with poetics. Cerith Wyn Evans was born in 1958 in Llanelli, Wales and now lives and works in London.
Recent solo exhibitions include the Museo Tamayo (2018), Tate Britain Commission (2017), Museion Bolzano (2015) and Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London (2014). He has also participated in the Venice Biennale (2017, 2010, 2003), Skulptur Projekte Münster (2017), Moscow Biennial (2011), Aichi Triennale (2010), Yokohama Triennale (2008) and Istanbul Biennial (2005). He studied at Central St Martin’s School of Art and Design and the Royal College of Art in London.
This year’s panel of judges comprises Sarah Brown (Senior Curator, Leeds Art Gallery), Martin Clark (Director, Camden Arts Centre), Margot Heller OBE (Director, South London Gallery) and Helen Legg (Director of Tate Liverpool). The winner will be announced at an award dinner at The Hepworth Wakefield on 15 November 2018.
Lead image: Cerith Wyn Evans with ‘Radiant fold (….the Illuminating Gas)’, 2017/18, National Museum Cardiff. Photo: P A Black © 2018
The Hepworth Prize For Sculpture, 26 October 2018 – 20 January 2019, The Hepworth Wakefield, Free entry