Sheila HicksOff Grid

Museum Exhibition

The Hepworth Wakefield

Wakefield

United Kingdom

7 Apr – 25 Sept 2022

Drawing together over 70 works from international public and private collections, this major exhibition explores the many facets of Hicks’ ground-breaking work. They range from intimate minimes — small woven explorations that Hicks continually creates on a hand-held frame – to large-scale installations that fill spaces with voluminous form and vibrant colour. The exhibition spans Hicks’ career from her earliest works made in the 1950s to new site-specific commissions.

Off Grid reveals how Hicks’ extensive travels across several continents, where she immersed herself in local communities and studied vernacular textile traditions by observing and collaborating with local artists and artisans, together with her own experimentation and natural curiosity, inspired her to develop an unique artistic language. On display are little-known photographs and journals offering insights into the extraordinary range of cultural and aesthetic influences that have inspired her work.

Prestigious collaborations and commissions have enabled Hicks to collapse the boundaries between art, architecture and design. These have included commissions for the Ford Foundation headquarters in New York, King Saud University in Riyadh and the Cultural Centre of Fuji City in Japan as well as projects with IBM, CBS, Air France, Rothschild Bank, Bridgestone, Artek and Georg Jensen, several of which are examined in the exhibition.

For The Hepworth Wakefield, Hicks has created major new installations that respond to David Chipperfield’s architecture and the new Tom Stuart-Smith garden, where there is a specially-commissioned monumental sculpture of weather-resistant fibres.

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(The Hepworth Wakefield)