The primary focus of this project is a radical re-reading of Barbara Hepworth’s sculpture Curved Form (Trevalgan) through its placement by patron and close friend Margaret Gardiner in the ‘perfect setting’ outside of the Pier Arts Centre in Stromness, Orkney.

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Pier Arts Centre has been described by Stephen Deuchar, Director of Art Fund, as ‘the pre-eminent centre for Hepworth’s work in Scotland.’ With numerous Hepworth works in its collection and an extensive archive and library, the Centre provides a unique opportunity to engage with Hepworth’s art in the distinctive environment of Orkney. As the Northernmost location in the UK to find a Hepworth, Stromness (and greater Orkney) evokes many tensions found in her works: a place entangled with human relationships between land and sea, distance and intimacy, placement and displacement, isolation and community.

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• What happens when Hepworth’s work is read through the perspective of the Northern landscape?

• To what extent might the placement/displacement of Hepworth’s work in Orkney, by her patron and friend Margaret Gardiner, reframe the contextualisation of a work?

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The placement of Hepworth’s works in Orkney directly resulted from the longstanding relationship with her patron and friend Margaret Gardiner. To deepen the understanding of Hepworth’s work in the context of the North requires further research into Gardiner’s friendship and patronage with Orkney and Hepworth. This initial research would include reviewing the Tate Archives, which hold collections of digitised correspondence (more than 90 letters) between Gardiner and Hepworth. 

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Gardiner’s initial response to the Orcadian landscape led to the founding of the Pier Arts Centre and the eventual bestowment of her art collection, which, with it, included the most extensive collection of Hepworth works in Scotland, albeit in a remote location. This project also looks to reconsider why Gardiner might have wanted to see the Hepworth work in Orkney and how Gardiner’s perspective of Hepworth’s work might have changed when it was installed in Stromness. 

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The history of the Pier Arts Centre's site also provides rich contextual material to explore, with its buildings located at the heart of the community since the 19th Century, through a fishing boom and wartimes. This includes the tenuous colonial histories of the Hudson’s Bay Company that used Stromness as a port during shipping journeys to Canada. 

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From an eccentric base in Orkney, I will then look back South and re-read the other Scottish sites where Hepworth’s work is installed. I will also trace and de-centre a reading of ‘Curve Form (Trevalgan)’ from the Pier Arts installation outwards - towards the editions with Tate, British Council, Kröller-Müller sculpture garden, and Buffalo AKG Art Museum.​