The Edges and Boundaries of Alison Wilding
Skye Sherwin, Frieze
August 2019
In the late 1960s, Ravensbourne College of Art in Bromley, Essex, was a cluster of new build rectangles surrounded by green-belt land. Here, the fledgling sculptor Alison Wilding and her fellow students would often work outdoors, contending with the vagaries of weather and Bromley Common as a site. One early piece created in her first dank and foggy autumn term she recalls in particular: numerous metal plates in the grass, which slowly became enveloped by mist and disappeared. The experience was literally transformative, both for the sculpture and the artist, setting off an interest in how edges and boundaries can be established and collapsed, in the change and containment of space and objects, which has shaped her approach ever since. The story too, with its fog rolling across the wet park, has the romantic gloom that frequently makes her suggestive, abstract work so affecting. […]