SCULPTURE & PAINTED RELIEFTHE HEIDE COLLECTION

A diverse selection of small sculptures and painted reliefs from the 1950s until the 2000s is brought together in this exhibition. Sampling the breadth and variety of the Heide Collection, these works range from formal modernist sculptures to those that cross the traditional boundaries between painting and sculpture and reveal a resourceful use of recycled objects and materials.

Many of the works were once in the personal collection of Heide founders John and Sunday Reed. Though initially focused on painting, their collection also included small-scale sculptures for display inside the home. Danila Vassilieff’s carved limestone figures from the early 1950s were among their first sculpture acquisitions, followed by works fashioned from synthetic modern materials such as the polyester resin in Ron Upton’s Little Blue Anna Blume (1966). Other pieces incorporate some unusual items; for example, the metal pipe in Colin Lanceley’s Stink Pipe Orpheus (c.1961) or the woollen fleece in Les Kossatz’s Ram in a Sling (1973).

Several artists the Reeds collected combined aspects of both painting and sculpture in a single work. Mike Brown, Ross Crothall and Colin Lanceley, who together called themselves the Imitation Realists, painted their sculptures and made wall-based reliefs by applying collage or adding sculptural elements to an otherwise flat surface. They used discarded household items like kitchen scales, tin cans or egg cartons, as a way of connecting art to everyday experience. Artists such as Col Jordan and John Krzywokulski, influenced by 1960s hard-edge abstraction, or Ken Reinhard, an exponent of Pop art, made unconventionally shaped paintings that have a bold, sculptural dimension.

Contemporary works acquired for the Collection since Heide became a public museum in 1981 continue this spirit of experimentation with the mediums of painting and sculpture. Their works convey a wide variety of individual approaches including painting on ceramics or fabric, making assemblages or casting in bronze. Also exhibited are maquettes of proposed works for Heide’s Sculpture Park, commissioned at various times from the 1980s through to the 2000s. The full scale versions of some of these models may be viewed around the gardens.