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Indepth Arts News:
"Kenny Hunter: Natural Selection"
2006-07-29 until 2006-11-05
Yorkshire Sculpture Park / Longside Gallery
Wakefield, ,
UK United Kingdom
Scottish artist Kenny Hunter presents a stunning exhibition of sculpture,
film and text in Yorkshire Sculpture Park’s 500sqm Longside Gallery.
The exhibition includes new work that has been enabled by YSP, and is
his largest solo show to date.
Hunter’s people, animals and recognisably contemporary objects have
a stilled and seamless clarity. Ranging from intimate to monumental in
scale, these sculptures establish a complicated and direct dialogue
with the viewer. They are often placed in historical sculptural poses:
they stand, recline or are seated and are placed on the top of columns
or pedestals.
Features and attributes are immediate, recognisable
and precisely defined. The ultra-smooth form does not simply recreate
a classical mode, but alludes to children’s toys and cartoons.
Recent work features seemingly ordinary, young people. They are
deeply engaging and loaded with potential, dressed in contemporary,
or sometimes overtly fashionable, clothes. The exhibition includes
Feedback Loop 2003, (Aberdeen Art Gallery Collection) and the
reclining figure, Youth With Split Apple 2004.
In a recent group of works, Animal Virtues 2004-06, Hunter looks at r-selected species: those that are opportunist, and particularly those
that have adapted to survival in an urban environment. They sit on
constructed arrangements of everyday objects, which are carefully cast
and coloured, or are found objects. Hunter investigates the idea of
made and found sculpture and the formal presentation of work on
plinths or pedestals. He constantly questions and responds to the
world around him, and his extraordinary talent enables him to make
startling and thought-provoking works.
Born in 1962, Kenny Hunter studied at Glasgow School of Art. He is based in
Glasgow and has had recent solo shows at Talbot Rice, Edinburgh (2003); CCA,
Glasgow (2003/4); Aberdeen Art Gallery; Conner Contemporary Art; Washington and
artconnexion, Lille (all 2004). In 2005, he was resident in New York (at Location One).
Other shows have included Modern Art and Houldsworth, London; Arnolfini, Bristol
and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. He has made commissions for Glasgow
Museums; the Tron Theatre, Glasgow; and Aberdeen Art Gallery. Hunter is currently
working on a major new public sculpture for Barnsley MBC, to commemorate the
town’s mining heritage. A book with text by Alex Hodby will be available.
retrospection)
This exhibition is generously sponsored by Glenfiddich and features
The Lion, the Poet and Daisy Cutter from the Glenfiddich collection.
The group of works, Animal Virtues, are a development of the series
which was commissioned by Glenfiddich and the Artconnexion Gallery
with support from the Scottish Executive and which was premiered as
part of the Entente Cordiale celebrations in 2004.
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