1. Location, Location, Location

Hepworth was not a fan of the ‘white cube’ museum or gallery environment for viewing her sculptures:

‘I always envisage ‘perfect settings’ for sculpture and they are, of course, mostly envisaged outside and related to the landscape. I prefer my work to be shown outside. I think sculpture grows in the open light and with the movement of the sun its aspect is always changing; and with space and the sky above, it can expand and breathe.’

2. The siting of the work at Abbot Hall

Hepworth was kept informed of plans for the siting of the sculpture at Abbot Hall and was sent architectural drawings and photographs of the proposed location. She gave her approval to the Director, Helen Kapp, in a letter dated 12 August 1966:

‘The position the architect has chosen would be the one I would have chosen, and I am very happy about it. Alas, I am terribly afraid that it would be impossible for me to come North to consult with you myself; but I am very happy that you and your architect are so attuned that you have chosen the place I would have chosen when I saw the photographs. With every good wish, Yours ever, Barbara’.

3. Sculpture in the round

For Hepworth the three-dimensional nature of sculpture was critical. The work was not just a shape to be looked at and admired from one fixed point of view: it was its own self-contained landscape to be explored and experienced physically:

‘I think every person looking at a sculpture should use his own body. You can’t look at a sculpture if you are going to stand stiff as a ram rod and stare at it, with sculpture you must walk around it, bend toward it, touch it and walk away from it.’

4. The Oval

The sculpture’s oval form was one that Hepworth had used throughout her career:

‘I have always been interested in oval or ovoid shapes. The first carvings were simple realistic oval forms of the human head or of a bird. Gradually my interest grew in more abstract values – the weight, poise, and curvature of the ovoid as a basic form. The carving and piercing of such a form seems to open up an infinite variety of continuous curves in the third dimension, changing in accordance with the contours of the original ovoid and with the degree of penetration of the material. Here is sufficient field for exploration to last a lifetime.’

5. The practical use of bronze

Hepworth starting using bronze as a medium for her sculpture in the mid-1950s. This incredibly hard-wearing material allowed for a greater proportion of her sculptures to be sited outside. It also allowed for multiple editions of her works to be produced: Oval Form (Trezion) can be found not just at Abbot Hall Art Gallery, but also at other museums around the world, from Texas to New Zealand.

6. The sculptural use of bronze

Bronze has useful properties that allowed Hepworth, and the viewer, to approach her sculptures in new ways:

‘The material allows more openness of course. I was a comparative newcomer to bronze, so I used it extravagantly to see how far I could go. It has a presence, but it doesn’t look at you in the way that a carving does. There is a stronger sense of participating in the form – you want to go in and out as you look at a sculpture like Trezion or Porthcurno. Maybe it’s not big enough to do this, but you don’t need to be physically entangled if you’ve got a pair of hands.’