Loss of Object and Bondage to It; Fig. 2

Loss of object and bondage to it; Fig. 2 was the third public sculpture commission for ‘Sculpture at Bermondsey Square’, a unique opportunity for an early or mid-career artist to work on a major public artwork. ‘Loss of object and bondage to it; Fig. 2‘ is a sculpture by London-based artist Frances Richardson, whose proposal was selected from applications to VITRINE’s open call. Richardson’s sculptural practice is an inquiry into the relationship between embodied cognition of architecture and human agency.

The sculpture is a development of work made during a studio residency at Lubomirov-Easton in Deptford, London in January 2014. In this work, Richardson constructed MDF supports to hold what appeared to be a draped fabric form. However, on closer inspection, the drape was found to be made of concrete canvas, a flexible concrete impregnated fabric that hardens on hydration to form a thin, concrete layer. What appeared to be a relationship between a hard frame holding a soft drape was in fact a mutually-supportive relationship, with the draped forms providing strength and balance to the overall structure.