joseph scissorhands: El Anatsui: Timespace/Behind the Red Moon

El Anatsui - Earth Struggling to Grow Roots and Leaves, 2023 (detail)

"Each material has its properties, physical and even spiritual." - El Anatsui.

A return to the October Gallery (previously here and here) to see Timespace, another exhibition of El Anatsui's large abstract cloths composed of recycled aluminium bottle-tops. They artfully and instinctively woven together with copper wire to create sculptural forms that buckle and warp when hung to reflect light on their various surface planes. The exhibition charts the artists progress comprising of both new and older works. The older clay forms were surprising and display a natural flair for working in three-dimensional forms. El Anatsui presents one pot with cracks in it using these imperfections and flaws as an integral part of the finished ceramic. There is also an example of the wooden wall reliefs created from slats of tropical hardwoods with which he began to establish his name in artistic circles. The surfaces of these reliefs would be scarred and gouged by chain saws and power tools before being accented with flashes of bright colour. Also on display are prints created from the circular wooden boards with which his studio assistants would puncture in the process of piercing the bottle-tops for his metal wall hangings. The overlapping circular prints are are titled the Eclipse series as they reminded the artist of the thirteen annual cycles of the moon. El Anatsui is also this year's chosen artist for the Hyundai Commission at Tate Modern so I went along to see how he had tackled the vast space there in comparison to the other artists who had taken on the challenge. Entitled Behind the Red Moon the three-part sculptural installation contains one of the artists largest bottle-top works ever. The first act of the installation (The Red Moon), features a huge sail-like, hanging sculpture composed of bottle-tops made from present day companies which have roots in colonial industries. The sail might represent those used on the ships which transported slaves in the middle passage. Red bottle-tops form a circular blood moon seen during a lunar eclipse. Act II of the installation (The World), sees a series of metal shapes formed from the seals of bottle-tops wired together creating a semi-transparent mesh-like material of vaguely human figures, forming a circle representing the earth and suggests human movement and migration around the globe. Act III (The Wall), comprises a monumentally scaled wall/curtain of bottle-tops to fill the vast industrial scale of the building. It represents structures built to constrain and hide things. The dramatic black colour refers to the people and continent of Africa and the diaspora. The rumpled wave forms at the foot of this installation once again relate to the sea and the possibilities of a return to African shores. I was just over-awed by the sheer scale of the pieces making up Acts I and II, and think El Anatsui's contribution to the legacy of Turbine Hall commissions is a very worthy one.