Briony Fer on Eva Hesse

Fruitmarket Segments

Professor Briony Fer’s keynote lecture on German-born American artist Eva Hesse, accompanying the 2009 Fruitmarket exhibition Eva Hesse: Studiowork, curated by Fer and Barry Rosen, Director of The Estate of Eva Hesse.

Throughout her career, Eva Hesse produced a large number of small, experimental works alongside her large-scale sculpture. These objects, the so-called test pieces, were made in a wide range of materials, including latex, wire-mesh, sculp-metal, wax and cheesecloth.

The exhibition was the result of new research by renowned Hesse scholar Professor Briony Fer and proposed that rather than simply technical explorations, these small objects radically put into question conventional notions of what sculpture is. Re-naming them studioworks rather than test pieces, the exhibition and the accompanying major publication offered a timely new interpretation of Hesse’s historical position, as well as highlighting her relevance for contemporary art now.

Further details about the show, including images and video, can be found at the Fruitmarket online archive.

The book produced to accompany the exhibition is currently out of print. However Briony Fer’s essay on Hesse is included in Words and Things, a celebration of the writing on art published by Fruitmarket over the gallery's fifty-year history. Words and Things is available now from Fruitmarket’s online bookshop.

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