Mark Tanner Sculpture Award: Thinking is Making

Start: Saturday 27 July, 2024

End: Saturday 21 September, 2024

Cross Lane Projects is delighted to present a group exhibition of Mark Tanner Sculpture Award winners from 2013 to present, continuing the 20th anniversary celebrations of the UK’s most significant sculpture prize.

The sculptural object, like the language used to describe it, is constantly evolving. No more so than in the past 20 years, where the politics of identity, race, gender and global conflicts have snapped at the heels of modernist diktats of form, weight and process. Sculpture can be ephemeral and forever mutating in practice.

This new exhibition presents ten of the most recent artists who have been selected as recipients of the award – Olivia Bax, Megan Broadmeadow, Rosie Edwards, Iain Hales, Lee Holden, Steph Huang, Dean Kenning, Kate Lyddon, Anna Reading and Frances Richardson. The work on show highlights their continuing practice following their year’s tenure and develops our own appreciation of what sculpture is and can be.

Cross Lane Projects has been a proud partner of the MTSA’s touring programme since the gallery’s inception in 2018. The first exhibition was Frances Richardson, followed by each subsequent award winner.

Mark Tanner was a British sculptor who trained at St. Martin’s College of Art and had been associated with Standpoint, which hosts the award in London, since its inception. He worked mainly in steel, and was one of the first artists to show in Standpoint Gallery. He died in 1998 after a long illness.

The award was established in 2001, on the initiative of and with full sponsorship from a private charitable trust, set up by local philanthropist Prudence Scott, to keep alive the passion and enthusiasm Mark had for making art. Prudence sadly passed away in 2019 and since then her daughter Rebecca Scott, CLP’s co-director, has taken over as her representative on the trust with the sole aim of continuing to support and nurture sculptors at a crucial development point in their careers.

The exhibition coincides with the launch of the new MTSA publication of the same name. ‘Thinking is Making: Objects in a Space’ showcases contemporary British sculpture through the lens of the object and its maker.

The book traces the development of the MTSA in its second decade. It is a celebration of the making of sculptural objects, and the definition and redefinition of “making”, “sculpture” and “object” over these years.

The book profiles the past decade of artists who have received the award, their continuing practice and explores what it is to be a sculptor today. An in-depth essay by art historian and curator Dr. Jon Wood explores the diverse field of sculpture making in Britain today, and considers how sculpture distinguishes itself from the work of other objects. The book also features a roundtable discussion between the internationally renowned guest judges of the award. Lisa Le Feuvre, Hew Locke, Mike Nelson and the late Phyllida Barlow discuss issues facing sculptors today and speculate on the future role of the MTSA as it moves into its third decade.