Shortlist announced for The Hepworth Prize for Sculpture 2018

The five shortlisted artists are Michael Dean, Mona Hatoum, Phillip Lai, Magali Reus and Cerith Wyn Evans. The finalists will present their work in an exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield that will run from the 26 October 2018 until 20 January 2019. The winner of the second Hepworth Prize for Sculpture will be announced at an awards dinner in November 2018.

"We successfully established The Hepworth Prize for Sculpture to encourage debate about what sculpture is by exploring it in its broadest definition," says Simon Wallis, Director of The Hepworth Wakefield. "I’m delighted that this shortlist continues the strengths of the inaugural Hepworth Prize for Sculpture in representing artists at different yet pivotal stages in their careers.

"The artists selected this year will again present a broad spectrum of experiences and concerns in their work. It will be a highly engaging and memorable exhibition by some of the key sculptors now working in the UK."

Michael Dean: “I can't even start to speak of what Hepworth means to me as an artist but I'm properly chuffed to have the chance to contribute to the f***king amazing work The Hepworth Wakefield is doing.”

Mona Hatoum: “I am delighted to be nominated for The Hepworth Prize for Sculpture and very honoured to have my name associated with that of the great artist. I look forward to exhibiting my work in The Hepworth Wakefield’s beautiful David Chipperfield designed gallery.”

Phillip Lai: “I’m really surprised and delighted to be asked to be involved in the second incarnation of The Hepworth Prize for Sculpture, especially with such amazing company. I hope the show we produce will celebrate some of the many very different mindsets and realities that sculptural practice is, and also reveal its unique focus and concentration.”

Magali Reus: “I feel sculpture is an important meditation on our material world, a proposal for a physical confrontation between object(s) and viewer. While communication, friendship, fiscal transaction, the consequences of conflict feel increasingly elusive in our contemporary relationship to substance, sculpture remains a tangible staging ground for moments of physical encounter. I am both very honoured and thrilled to be part of an exhibition that is focusing on this kind of investigation.”

Cerith Wyn Evans: “I’m delighted at the opportunity to engage with the architecture of The Hepworth Wakefield. It’s refreshing in its acknowledgement that the vicissitudes of light and time are intrinsic to the appreciation of sculpture and plastic form that for all too long has merely been considered 3-Dimensional."