‘A line can go anywhere’

Wire sculptures

The opening chapter of our new project starts with the introduction of two female artists who create using a wire line – transparent hanging sculptures, tri-dimensional drawings, installations..

Organic hanging crocheted wire sculptures of iconic Ruth Asawa meet exaggerated wire faces popping out of canvases of Fiona Morley.

Separated by time and cultures, by different sensibilities and styles, it is almost extraordinary how both describe their fascination with the wire line in a similar way.  For both, drawing serves as a ‘center of gravity’

For Ruth, who drew every day, it was the “greatest pleasure and the most difficult.“

For Fiona, it was a fascination with using wire as a way of drawing in space. ‘My work developed into a  combination of illustration and linear sculpture; I achieved this with wire as the line can be taken off the page and into space’. 

The effect of wire drawn in space is an ephemeral one, ghostly. ‘It appears somewhere between the solid state and nothingness, which I feel to be a more accurate view of reality’.

For Ruth, looped-wire sculptures explore the relationship of interior and exterior volumes, creating, as she put it, “a shape that was inside and outside at the same time.”

“I was interested in it because of the economy of a line, making something in space, enclosing it without blocking it out. It’s still transparent. I realized that if I was going to make these forms, which interlock and interweave, it can only be done with a line because a line can go anywhere.”

And, that is how Ruth opened the path for our multifaceted explorations of a ‘line’. Leading to connections, shapes, volumes, blurring the boundaries of dimensions..