Makers’ voices: four themes for material literacy in contemporary sculpture

ABSTRACT

Material has come to be acknowledged as an important source of political and social meaning due to recent philosophical and sociological debates concerning ‘material agency', particularly linked to theorists such as Alfred Gell, Bruno Latour and Jane Bennett. This has clear implications for art: it explores the effects material has on human behaviour and vice versa. In contrast, art criticism commonly positions material as secondary to metaphysical interpretation. Critics such as Rosalind Krauss and Lucy Lippard avoid analysing material's multiple sources of information. As a result, we as viewers are ill-equipped to examine the meanings it embodies. This paper presents sculpture as an appropriate framework from which to engage with this problem, as it remains a discipline which creatively explores material in three-dimensional space. Four themes have been developed from the analysis of qualitative interviews carried out with eight emerging UK sculptors in order to work towards a condition of ‘material literacy’ in contemporary art practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Sculpture
• material
• agency
• meaning
• literacy
• practice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Ellie Barrett is a sculptor, practice-based researcher and lecturer at Lancaster University. A core research interest is material meaning in emerging sculptural practice and its overlaps with social and political dialogues. Her sculpture has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including a recent solo exhibition in London (2020), and group presentations in New York (2018) and Manchester (2018). She was recently awarded a research residency at Joya: AiR in Los Veléz National Park, Spain and a commission from Lancaster Arts, UK.