Trickster Figures

Trickster Figures: Sculpture and the Body presents the next chapter in the story of British sculpture, bringing together a selection of work by eleven contemporary artists. The exhibition explores the body’s newly configured relation to the world which involves increasingly fluid movement between binary systems, technology, human forms, animals, identities, and the environment.

Encompassing sculpture in its widest sense, the exhibition includes play, touch and sound. Works made from crab shells, tree roots, shopping bags, and hosiery sit alongside a dance floor and a water fountain. A number of works will change and grow, others are made to be worn, and some will never be finished.

“There is a leakage, a seepage in these works. Many of them allude to bodies or systems that relate to bodies. Jealous bodies, broken bodies, fossilised bodies, vulnerable, contaminated bodies. There is also love, tenderness, glamour, and compulsion. A kind of letting go of old systems and categories, authorship and control. An embrace of fluidity, instability, something beyond language and gender."
Jes Fernie

Artists:
Saelia Aparicio | Alice Channer | Jesse Darling | Nicolas Deshayes | Kira Freije | Siobhán Hapaska | Nnena Kalu | Joe Namy | Harold Offeh | Ro Robertson | Vanessa da Silva

Milton Keynes Gallery, 4 February - 7 May 2023

Exhibition catalogue:

Design: Mark El-khatib
Editor: Jes Fernie
Texts: Francis Whorrall-Campbell and Jes Fernie

Big thanks to all those galleries and individuals who funded it / helped made it happen: Maximillian William Gallery, Action Space, Large Glass Gallery, The Approach, Kerlin Gallery, Modern Art, Karen Smith, Bina von Stauffenberg, Frank Krikhaar, Victoria Thomas.

And to the Henry Moore Foundation and the Association for Art History which funded the exhibition and Francis' text.

Installation views:
Nicolas Deshayes, Kira Freije, Alice Channer, Ro Robertson, Nnena Kalu
Photos: Rob Harris